What Is the Actual Problem?

The economy is not a fixed pie, and it's not the federal budget. It's a cycle. Production, income, spending, rent, profit, reinvestment, constantly moving like clothes spinning in a washing machine. People inside that cycle don't just take from it. They work. They earn. They spend. They rent. They buy food. They use services. They generate demand, and that demand becomes someone else's income. That's how the system sustains itself. So when you add people to that system, you're not just adding mouths to feed. You're adding workers, customers, tenants, and participants. And when you remove people, you're not just removing takers. You're removing labor, demand, and economic activity all at once. That's why at a basic level, more people inside an economy make it bigger. Fewer people make it smaller or more fragile. And none of that changes based on immigration status. If a person is in the United States working, renting, buying food, paying bills, using transportation, and participating in daily life, they are part of the economy. Status changes their rights and their vulnerability. It does not erase their economic function. In fact, many undocumented immigrants pay into tax systems through payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes through rent, while being largely excluded from many federal benefits. So even on the government side of the ledger, the idea that they are purely taking and not contributing just doesn't hold up. But the economy is mostly the private sector anyway. It's millions of everyday transactions, people buying groceries, paying rent, going to work, hiring services, and every person inside the system participates in that whether people want to acknowledge it or not. Now if someone wants to argue that immigration is a problem, the question is simple: what is the actual problem being caused? If the claim is crime, the data does not support it. Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, do not commit crime at higher rates than US-born citizens. In the data we have, they commit crime at lower rates. So if you actually care about crime, you go where the crime is. You don't focus on a group that makes up a smaller share of the problem. You focus on the largest contributors first. That's basic problem solving. Focusing on immigrants as a primary driver of crime is not just wrong. It's inefficient. It's solving the wrong part of the problem. So if crime isn't the issue, then what is? Are they taking jobs? Because we have labor shortages across entire sectors of the economy, agriculture, construction, hospitality, logistics, jobs that in many cases Americans are not filling at prevailing wages. So if the argument is that immigrants are taking those jobs, then the real argument is that Americans should be willing to do that work for that pay. That's a different argument. That's an argument about wages and labor standards, not about immigration itself. Are they draining public resources? Because they are also paying into the system through taxes, through consumption, through rent, through everyday economic activity, while often being ineligible for many of the benefits people assume they're taking. So again, what is the actual problem? And then there's the law. We write laws for a reason. Laws are not self-justifying. They are supposed to address real problems. If someone wants to say they are breaking the law, then the next question is obvious: what is the law trying to solve? What is the harm? If the only answer is because the law says so, then that's not a justification. That's circular. We don't write laws just to have rules. We write them to address real problems, to prevent harm, to protect people. So if you can't explain what harm is being prevented, if you can't point to a real material problem, then what you're left with is applying a rule for its own sake. And at that point it becomes arbitrary, because now the distinction isn't about behavior, it's not about harm, it's not about outcomes. It's just about who the rule is being applied to. And at a fundamental level, this is simple. If you have more people inside your economy working, spending, renting, consuming, you have more economic activity. More demand, more production, more circulation. That makes the economy bigger. And if you remove those people, you shrink all of that at once. So if someone wants to argue against immigration, they need to make a real case about real problems. Because the idea that people living, working, and participating in the economy somehow make it smaller or more dangerous just isn't supported by the evidence.