Immigrants Reduce America’s Deficit

CATO  -   Amid ongoing congressional debates—culminating, of course, in a partial shutdown—over Trump’s mass deportation agenda, one fact in particular should capture both Democrats’ and Republicans’ attention: immigrants provide an enormous boost to the country’s long-term economic and fiscal health, reducing our massive deficit by a third.
Off the bat, the Trump administration’s instincts on the economic effects of immigration are wrongheaded. “For decades, the structure of U.S. society, by intent and design, was remade to redistribute wealth, resources, property and opportunity from Americans to non-Americans,” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said in December. It’s a compelling narrative, but it’s simply incorrect.

The evidence for immigrants’ significant economic contribution to America is overwhelming. Indeed, a new study published recently by the Cato Institute, analyzing three decades of fiscal policy for the first time, finds Deputy Chief Miller’s logic precisely backward: foreigners are creating wealth and redistributing it to Americans. The study finds that immigrants reduced the U.S. debt by nearly a third, or $14.5 trillion, from 1994 to 2023.