Published: 07.12.2007
Economic impact of immigrants on AZ
Report: Immigrant work force worth billions
All migrants, legal and illegal, considered in UA calculations
The Arizona Republic

If all noncitizen workers were removed from Arizona's workforce, economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, according to a University of Arizona study released Wednesday.
That group, which is mostly illegal immigrants, represents 8.2 percent of the state's economic activity, the study found.
The report also found that Arizona's legal and illegal immigrants generated nearly $44 billion in output.
"Output" includes the value of goods produced in industry, wages and profits.
"I'm not making a stand on what policy should be," said author Judith Gans, a program manager at the university's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. "This just shows what's at stake."
The study is based on Census Bureau and other data from 2004, the most complete year available. It assumed most noncitizens in the state are illegal immigrants.
Gans conceded that the research does not capture all costs associated with illegal immigrants, but claims it caught significant expenses.
"It is not the purpose of this study to address the myriad issues surrounding illegal immigration or to imply in any way that illegal immigration is not a problem," Gans wrote in the study, funded by the Thomas R. Brown Foundation in Tucson.
The group funds academic research and promotes education about the economy.
Their findings did not surprise Jack Camper, president and CEO of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
Tucson businesses have long known immigrants provide an economic spark. The trick is to make more immigrants legal, Camper said.
"That just speaks to the need for a guest worker program," Camper said. "We need to provide some way to bring 12 million illegal immigrants out of the shadows."
However, the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., research group that advocates slowing immigration, said such studies don't pay enough attention to the basic services that illegal immigrants in Arizona cost the state.
"What about roads, fire protection, police?" research director Steven Camarota said. "There should be some benefit for the native-born population (from immigrants working in the economy). It just appears to be very small and come at the expense of less-educated natives."
Illegal immigrant workers are a drain on the economy, he said.
"But most 40-year-old males in Arizona without a high school diploma who are white are a fiscal drain also," Camarota said.
The study also looked at what would happen to specific industries that lost most noncitizen workers. The figures assumed unskilled citizens would fill some positions.
Without most noncitizen immigrants, the simulations showed:
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