Do Illegal Immigrants Hurt or Help the U.S. Economy

With only two days to discuss whether or not immigrants hurt or help the economy, I thought we should expand our discuss to the blog (my premise is that most of this discussion centers not around legal immigrants, but illegal immigrants).  Obviously the debate is complex and is not whether or not undocumented immigrants help or hurt our economy, but in what ways they help and hurt.  Let's try to be specific about the ways they hurt or help.

Below are some interesting comments from Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan about how illegal immigrants are helping our economy (appearing before a Senate subcommittee in April 2009):

There is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy.

Economists generally view the overall economic benefits of this workforce as significantly outweighing the costs.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aeQKG53ULolk

Finally, one more point about undocumented immigrants using health care via emergency rooms.  This is definitely a problem in California that has really hurt a number of people in this industry.  The problem, according to my view, is not that immigrants take advantage of our system without putting anything in (there is plenty of evidence to suggest that immigrants put more money into our system than they take out), but how we distribute taxes in our country.  Given that 75% of undocumented immigrants have taxes taken out of their paycheck, there is a lot of tax money going to the federal government, which thus does not go to the state of California.  I think the federal government should give a higher percentage of that federal tax money to states like California that have the burden of keeping the undocumented immigrants healthy.  That would solve the problem without blaming undocumented immigrants (and this problem will only continue because any health care reform bill will not include undocumented immigrants, which means they will continue to go to the emergency rooms).

Let the debate begin!!