Wisconsin Public Radio recently spoke with CLS faculty member Armando Ibarra about the economic contributions of immigrants, documented and undocumented in Wisconsin. The interview aired November 5th. The occasion for the story was a new report by the New York-based nonprofit Upwardly Global that credits authorized migrants with revitalizing rural communities Great Lakes region. Among other things, the report notes that migrants contribute $3 billion in taxes in 2022. In his comments, Prof. Ibarra noted that the labor of undocumented immigrants, many of them from Latin America, also sustains many industries in Wisconsin, including the dairy industry. He added that it is tiresome for those in the Latino community to always have to “make the case that you’re good and that you belong.”
“There should be no mystery in our country that unauthorized immigrants pay state taxes and pay federal taxes,” he added. “There should be no mystery that unauthorized immigrants can’t draw Social Security upon retirement. It is no mystery that unauthorized immigrants really help to uphold this system that we have that takes care of the most vulnerable and the elderly.”
A former Director of the CLS Program, Armando Ibarra is a professor with the School for Workers and the Chican@ & Latin@ Studies Program.