Home of Today's Common Sense

I read the an excellent article in the Sunday, December 8, Brownsville Herald entitled “Immigrants still wanted in Hard Times” and while Mr. Navarrette focused on latin migration and left out some other benefits he hit the nail on the head when he said “…what Americans should know by now, even if some are reluctant to admit it: Immigrants were an undeniable and indispensable factor in the nation’s economic growth over the past decade.”
In my opinion they are what will save the U.S. social security system from collapse during the “Aging of America”. As the workforce ages and more folks (baby boomers) go into retirement, the numbers jobs do not disappear but actually increase as more older folks need more services.
These jobs will be filled by immigrants who will work and pay taxes thereby continuing the viability of the social security system. In fact as it was reported that one-half of all the new wage earners who entered the labor force in the 1990’s were immigrants. Therefore the much touted doom of the social security used to scare our older folks is merely a political ploy used to advance a particular political agenda.
I also urge folks to look other statistics provided to describe how bad things are: unemployment is at 6% – that means that 94% of the workforce is working! That was a pretty good mark in my school, unless you are one of the 6%. However in the late 50’s and 60’s that 6% was considered the number of people in transit from one job to another, rather than true unemployment.
All of this when ½ of the new workers are immigrants and 94% are still working!