Illegal immigrants, American agriculture and you

If you're indignant from the title alone, wait till the next update where I present this mess in regards to taxes and unemployment benefits

Two very common arguments against those in favor of deporting illegal immigrants is that 1) illegal immigrants are needed to keep America's food prices low and affordable and 2) that the agricultural market pays little and that only illegal immigrants are willing to hold low skilled agricultural occupations. However, in summary of this article here, this is false as #1 - when food prices are taken to their extreme figures, individuals would still gain $110.42 yearly in saved taxes due to illegal immigrants creating a fiscal deficiency of 54.5 billion annually; and #2 - once deportation as taken place, America can afford to pay farmworkers $15 an hour (or $54,600 a year) while continuing to save the individual $77.90 yearly.

Argument 1) illegal immigrants are needed to keep America's food prices low and affordable:

As known, the argument typically follows a line of logic that by excluding illegal, cheap labor America's food prices will increase to the point of putting financial hardship on its citizens. However, on the contrary, this is false when you calculate the numbers. According to PewHispanic (2012) [1], the number of illegal immigrants totaled 11.2 million individuals, of which, 4% worked in the industry of farming, fishing and forestry, totaling 26% of its workforce. Using these figures, an expectation of 448,000 unauthorized individuals working in the industry of farming can be given.

Admittedly, there is a challenge to obtaining reliable sources on to what extent illegal immigrants earn along with what their hourly work week is. Nonetheless, for sake of the argument we will say that illegal immigrants make $0.0 per hour, working a weekly rate of 60 hours and that by hiring legal citizens, the agricultural market would be losing $12.30 per hour (the average pay of agricultural workers [2]) at a rate of 60 hours per week. All things considered, another thing to keep in mind is that illegals, granted, earn above $0.0 per hour or initially they would not have an incentive to become laborers in America and that the following figures are figures taken to extreme (and ridiculous) estimates. And if correct data was able to be obtained, we would see these figures being less than what they are.

Assuming deportation of all illegals, leaving the U.S. population at 311,900,000 people, and the hiring of 448,000 legal citizens at a rate $12.30 an hour and 60 hours per week (+20 of those hours being overtime, 1.5x pay) this leaves the cost of food $20,057,856,000 per year higher for all Americans when using the formula (P x H + OP x OH) x N. Where P= pay per hour; H= hours annually worked, no overtime; OP= overtime hourly pay; OH= overtime hours annually worked; and N= number of replaced workers and or population. Upon dividing $20,057,856,000 to 311,900,000 individuals, this leads to a increase of food prices of $64.30 per year, per individual or $257.23 per year for a family of four.

As can be seen, food pricing when paying the current market value for agricultural labor would at max only rise to $64.30 more per year, per individual.

Ultimately, it may sound nonsensical to increase food prices by $20,057,856,000 a year, but keep in mind that the average individual already spends about $2,600 [5] on food yearly and America spends 1.46 trillion dollars annually [6] on food and beverages and that by increasing America's food prices by $20,057,856,000, food prices are only estimated to rise by 1.37% annually. Put into perspective, if a gallon of milk cost $2.50 before deportation, you can expect to pay 3.25 cents more if food prices rise by 1.37% and that's if it would raise at all.

To rephrase it, would deporting illegal immigrants offset the cost of rising food prices? As first established by Rector and Richwine in 2013 [3], upon looking at impact of illegal immigration, it is seen that illegal households have a negative affect on the U.S.'s fiscal budget, equating to 54.5 billion yearly. Following this further, using the formula S - P = C (where S= fiscal cost saved from deportation, P= new pricing of food and C= cost), we were able to total here, by deportation of illegal immigrants alone, a fiscal burden of $34,442,144,000 would be annually removed, thus returning $110.42 in taxes yearly to all individuals, counteracting any rising prices of agricultural products.

Argument 2) Agricultural markets pay so little that only illegal immigrants are willing to hold low skilled agricultural occupations:

Typically, this argument falls into a discussion of how likely it would be to move Americans to the field of agriculture and what will likely be demanded hourly wage for it. Justifiably, I will say that we will raise all farmhand jobs to $15 per hour ($54,600 per year and increase of $2.70 per hour), as it is the price of labor currently being demanded for in minimum wage, for 1,032,000 farmworkers [4]. Using the (P x H + OP x OH) x N formula, at 60 hours per week, we would expect food prices to rise $10,142,496,000 annually. Factoring this out from $34,442,144,000 billion in budget deficiencies saved from deportations, this leaves the U.S. a surplus of $24,299,648,000 from deportations yearly, returning $77.90 to each individual per annum.

Sources:

[1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/03/26/share-of-unauthorized-immigrant-workers-in-production-construction-jobs-falls-since-2007/

[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#45-0000

[3] http://www.heritage.org/immigration/report/the-fiscal-cost-unlawful-immigrants-and-amnesty-the-us-taxpayer

[4] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/background.aspx

[5] https://www.valuepenguin.com/how-much-we-spend-food

[6] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending

[7] Your mom