I joined the only and only Richard Quest on CNN last week to talk about migration. That was the same day that President Biden and Former President Trump were visiting the US-Mexico border.
Check it out (below the video you can find the transcript)
Transcript
QUEST: Professor Bahar of Brown is with me. Good to see you, sir. And this is where economics and politics are not good bedfellows even if they ever really are, because the economics says you need immigration and the politics says not on your life. Square the circle for me, sir.
DANY BAHAR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BROWN UNIVERSITY: Well, there are so many things to unpack, Richard. The first thing is that, you know, I want to say something provocative, which is that the crisis in the border is going to resolve on its own. If you actually look at 20 years of data, you will see that there's many more crossings at the same time where there's a very overheated labor market in the U.S.
Right now we are at a stage in the U.S. labor markets that there's about 1.5 job openings for every unemployed person in the U.S., meaning that if every unemployed person in the U.S. goes and takes all jobs there are still going to be many more jobs to fill, and immigrants react to that. And there's a huge pull factor that is bringing them to this country because they know that they could get jobs.
And in the absence of legal pathways to do that, because the migration laws of this country haven't changed for 30 years, they go and try to get through the southern border.
QUEST: Right.
BAHAR: So, you know, it's a reality that I think is not reflected in the speeches of politicians on either side.
QUEST: No. But, I mean, you know, we all know and I certainly know undocumented people who want to work, may have been here for many years, want to work in legitimate jobs. But as the various restrictions, if you will, requirements, Social Security numbers, tax ID number, all the canopy of rules that are designed to prevent employers from paying cash under the table that makes it very difficult. It makes these undocumented open and easy to abuse.
BAHAR: Absolutely. It makes them very vulnerable and at the same time, you know, it is a lot of taxpayers' money that doesn't exist because if these people had the right to work in the regular ways, there will be paying payroll taxes. They will be paying income taxes. They would be paying state taxes that they're not right now.
QUEST: So is your preference -- finally, is your preference for a greater guest worker program, visas come in but go home, or something else that allows people -- you know, I shudder when I say the word amnesty because I can hear everybody getting up in arms. You know, how do you take the three million or four million who are here illegally and put them to a proper pathway to citizenship?
BAHAR: Look, I think that the real thing to think about here in terms of policies like how many workers this country need and is going to need over the next 10 years. Those politicians who think that this country can rely and fill the jobs, the demand for labor without immigration, they just haven't looked at the data. And by the way, people tend to think that, you know, the only thing that we should be focusing on is high skill workers.
But the reality is that if you go right now to the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States and you look at how much demand there's going to be for occupations over the next 10 years, you're not only going to see doctors and engineers, you're also going to see nurses, and truck drivers and cooks. And the reality of the economy is that the doctor needs the cook and the cook, you know, need to the cab driver and we all complement each other.
And therefore, you can't -- you need to have this legal pathways that allow workers from every skill level to fulfill the jobs. And right now, you know, whatever program we can think it just have to be -- it just have to make common sense with the needs of this country that, by the way, just to make it even more complicated, it's going to go through a demographic transition when there's many old people and a very much smaller base of young people who can actually work.
QUEST: Less of looking at me when you say old. Thank you, Doctor.
BAHAR: Thank you.