How is the undocumented immigrant community affecting the U.S. economy?
First and foremost, it’s a source of value added. The total goods and services that they consume through their paycheck, plus all that they produce for their employers, is close to about $800 billion. They’re also producing at relatively lower costs because the undocumented population typically gets about 20% less in wages than if they were legalized. That leads to lower prices for us and higher profits to employers. In addition, they’re obviously a huge consumer base. We’ve seen that 90% of the wages that the undocumented population gets are spent inside the U.S. Remittances are sent abroad, but that only represents about 10% of immigrants’ income. The numbers are becoming quite huge. We estimate about $50 billion dollars in remittances this year. That means that total consumptive capacity remaining in the U.S. is $400 billion to $450 billion. Q: Why are companies waking up to the largely untapped opportunity to target the undocumented? A: This is by definition a segment of the econom
