UA expert: Poverty drives illegal immigration

Poverty is the major driving force of immigration, a University of Arizona researcher told a Green Valley audience, but no one can seem to eradicate it.

Judith Gans of the university’s Udall Center for Study of Public Policy said many of the concerns about immigration are well known, but recently the discussion has moved to the front burner.

Put simply, extremely poor people migrate to better paying jobs as an act of survival.

“There are a whole lot of people out there who are extremely poor,” Gans told a meeting of the American Association of University Women.

The audience at the Joyner-Green Valley Library numbered more than 60 and almost as many men as women filled the seats.

“A lot of economists haven’t figured out to get countries out of poverty,” she said.

We’re aware of the migration of Mexican workers to Arizona, but “migration is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in Mexico,” Gans said.

Where millions of Latin Americans immigrate to the United States for jobs, often in agriculture, other countries bring work to their workers. An example is China which is becoming an industrial giant heavily supported by low-paid workers there.

Having a large population of low-paid immigrant workers can be costly to states like Arizona, but overall the economy benefits from their work. The money they spend and the taxes they pay outweigh the costs of services they receive.

A majority of immigrant Arizona workers come to work in the fields and orchards, but agriculture is really a small part of the state’s economy, Gans said.

And one rule of poverty seems to be that “people earn more based on where they are and not who they are,” she said.

In the long term, immigrant workers can benefit the state more because the workforce here is “aging, growing slowly. The workforce is getting older.”

Who’ll do the work for those who drop out of the labor pool?

Maricopa County is the state’s most populous and not surprisingly “The bulk of foreign-born live in Maricopa County,” said Gans.

“A large chunk of foreign born in Arizona are undocumented,” she said.

One of the ways illegal immigrants pay back to the state is through sales taxes. Everyone pays those, she said.

There’s one big cost to Arizonans created by undocumented immigrations, medical costs. Very few have health insurance and rely on tax-supported health centers.

She said, “61 percent of non-citizens are uninsured.” Just 35 percent of citizens don’t have health insurance.”

Illegal immigrant workers lose out when it comes to Social Security.

Most pay taxes to the system, but relatively few ever receive its benefits.

“There’s $200 billion sitting in Social Security that’s not being used,” said Gans.

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