Development Works Number 3, July 2012 | Page 5

& Realities Myths Myth: Immigrants are Reality: It seems like a good bet that “subtracting immi- taking jobs away from U.S. citizens. grants” from the workforce would lower America’s stubbornly high unemployment rates. After all, then there would be job openings. But only about 2 percent of Americans work on farms. The reality is that there have been numerous attempts to recruit citizens to do field work—even at jobs that pay more than minimum wage—but none of them have been successful on a large scale. In our abandonment of farm labor as a common occupation, Americans are not alone. Other developed countries—and developing countries that are a bit wealthier than their neighbors—also have agricultural work forces dominated by immigrants. El Salvador, while the source of many workers on U.S. farms, is itself home to about 200,000 unauthorized immigrants who work on its own farms. Myth: The United Reality: Immigration enforcement is expensive—for States doesn’t need to worry about immigration issues beyond just deporting the unauthorized immigrants themselves. example, in 2010 it cost the Department of Homeland Security an estimated $1 billion to detain and deport 76,000 Central Americans. Yet if conditions in their home communities have not improved, people who have been deported don’t “stay deported.” In recent surveys, for example, 43 percent of those deported to Central America say they plan to return to the United States within a year. The figure is even higher among those who left family members behind in the United States. When workers are deported, the money they are saving from their U.S. jobs and sending home stops—worsening the situation in impoverished migrant-sending communities. This is not a minor concern—for example, in 2011 the money sent home (called “remittances”) comprised 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of Honduras’ and El Salvador’s total economic outputs. In reality, we can only ease our concerns about unauthorized immigration by helping to stop what is causing it: hunger and poverty in the communities of those willing to risk illegal border crossings. 5