This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The solution to the issue of illegal immigration will not be found by totaling the numbers we compile, but by agreeing about the kind of people we are.
Those arguing about what the federal government and the states should do are quick to cite statistics on how many undocumented workers there are, what burden they place on the schools, the criminal justice system and various social services and what they produce in terms of labor, purchasing power and tax payments.
In a recent series of articles, The Salt Lake Tribune took a suitably above-the-fray look at those arguments and was not afraid to conclude that concluding much of anything from the available data is, at best, a reach. Certainly, even the most pessimistic read of the data provides little reason for alarm.
Much of the impact of illegal immigration, from crime to education to taxes, seems little more than a rounding error in a much larger landscape of economic and social factors that seem to matter more to people when both the economy and the society are thought to be in decline.
It is difficult to add up everything that is done — good, bad or indifferent — by people who officially aren't here. When any expert tries to determine how many of Utah's students, farm laborers, prison inmates or taxpayers are here without permission — and what difference it makes — the other side has little trouble pointing out the flaws and questionable extrapolations in any set of conclusions.
But there are a pair of obvious facts that should not need a spreadsheet to be self-evident. One is that everyone here pays taxes. Even with phony IDs, workers have state and federal income taxes and Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes deducted from their wages. Undocumented workers who stay that way never get any of those payroll taxes back, either, and the money stays in the pool to support the rest of us. Every purchase, meanwhile, involves sales tax and every rent payment includes a chunk for property taxes.
The other is that America has always attracted immigrant labor to do its dirty work. Those who answer that call are a self-selected group of workers and strivers who, in a generation or two, do more than merely assimilate into our culture. They enrich it. The fact that full assimilation now requires higher levels of education is all the more reason why our public schools and universities should not be closed to anyone on the basis of immigration status.
When numbers do not call for drastic action, we are left with our values. Thus should the law view this issue in the most reasonable, most humane, way possible.