Dear Editor,
The sad thing about Joe Guzzardi’s anti-immigrant column, of August 1, is not only that it is full of misinfonnation about Senate Bill 744, but that its tone carries an echo of the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the ‘Nativist’ party of the nineteenth century, as well as the K.K.K.. Back then it was the immigrants from Gennany, Ireland and Sweden that were accused of being a threat to our nation, today it is directed at
Hispanics.
Rather than focusing on the alleged negative impact of immigration reform, let’s consider the economic benefits of fixing our broken immigration system and its impact for Kansas families.
COMMON SENSE IMMIGRATION REFORM WILL STRENGHTEN KANSAS’S ECONOMY AND CREATE JOBS
According to Regional Economic Models, Inc.
• The senate bill which provides a pathway to earned citizenship and expands a highskilled and other temporary worker programs would together boost Kansas’s economic output by $240 million and create approximately 2,964 new jobs in 2014. By 2045, the boost to Kansas’s economic output would be around $1.7 billion dollars, in 2012 dollars.
• Immigrants already make important contributions to Kansas’s economy. For example, Kansas’s labor force is 8.7% foreign born.
COMMONSENSE IMMIGRATION REFORM FOSTERS INNOVATION AND ENCOURAGES JOB CREATION IN KANSAS
• 5.7% of Kansas business owners are immigrants. These businesses generate $350 million in income for Kansas each year.
• In Kansas, 51 % of science lengineering graduate students in the most researchintensive schools are foreign born. Also, 77.2% of the state’s engineering PhD’s are foreign-born.
COMMONSENSE IMMIGRATION REFORM INCREASES WORKER’S INCOME, RESULTING IN NEW STATE AND LOCAL TAX REVENUE.
* Providing a pathway to earned citizenship and expanding high- and low-skilled visa programs will increase total personal income for Kansas families by $479 million.
• Immigrants significantly increased home values in Kansas between 2000 and 2010- in Johnson County, the increase was $1,883 for the median home.
• There are 65,531 farms in Kansas that sell approximately $14.4 billion in agricultural products. Noncitizen fannworkers accounted for 16% of all fannworkers in Kansas between 2007 and 2011 . According to one study, in 2020 an expanded temporary worker program, like the one in the Senate bill, would increase Kansas’s real personal income by 46 million in 2012 dollars
• Many Kansas residents support comprehensive immigration refonn
• According to polling by Partnership for a New America, 66% o,[Kansas residents support enacting commonsense comprehensive immigration reform
Robert Feldt
Great Bend