00:00You both took part in a fascinating study, multi-trillion dollar and multi-million worker
00:05contributions. Give us a sense, Philip, I will start with you. How long it would take
00:10for this trillion dollar loss to be realized?
00:14So we essentially looked at this executive order, looked at those that were born to two
00:20undocumented or two temporary immigrant parents, both in the past, so they're already currently
00:25working in the workforce as well as those in the future. And we essentially, as totaling
00:31all that up in terms of an accounting exercise, we determined that there would be about $7.7
00:36trillion that they would have contributed within the next few decades as well as the past few
00:41decades. When it comes to those in the future, that trillion dollar number, that would be
00:46realized over their working lifetimes. So many of them, of course, are not yet to be born.
00:52We'd be born in the next few decades, but then those individuals will likely become adults
00:57later on and be able to contribute to the workforce. And that could be that potential
01:01trillion dollar loss.
01:03And for just looking at these numbers, it looks like certain parts of the country are likely
01:07to feel this more than others. Where are the parts of the country that could really be impacted
01:11by this?
01:14Yeah, so the geographical differences in the impacts really boil down to demographic differences.
01:21Basically, if we think about California and Texas, that's where the largest group of beneficiaries
01:29of birthright citizenship live. So just those two states would account for about one third
01:37of the overall effect. But the other two thirds are really spread all over the country.
01:44So it would be something that you think most Americans would notice the impact of?
01:50Yes, definitely. So just in those two states, California and Texas, we estimate that there are
01:59over one million people, U.S. citizens, that gain their citizenship thanks to the birthright citizenship
02:09law.
02:11Wow.
02:12Pretty staggering numbers here when you consider these two states in California, more than
02:15$2 trillion alone, almost one and a half in Texas. These are economies larger than some
02:21countries, Philip. When you just put the California and Texas effect in place alone, could this be
02:26recessionary?
02:29Well, it's hard to say of how that could play out with a number of other factors. This wouldn't be
02:33immediate. It would be something that we felt over a longer period of time, and that was the aim of
02:37the
02:37study, to give that broad lifetime look. Sometimes, you know, as we look into these numbers, we want to be
02:45careful to be able to see that long-term effect. So the numbers would kind of speak for themselves in
02:52terms of the volume. I would add also that in our estimates here, we really went a very conservative
02:58approach to really define the population as being those that were children of undocumented, two
03:04undocumented parents that were living in the U.S. today, and maybe would have children in the future.
03:10And so these numbers are very conservative. It could be as twice as much, depending on what kind of
03:15assumptions you put on the data. So this certainly would have a strong impact if birthright citizenship
03:21were to be denied for these individuals into the future.
03:24And Francesca, I'm looking at a big graph here that shows all the different economic sectors that
03:30could be hit hardest. Surprisingly, you have office administration at the top, and then other things
03:35like construction, architecture. Where do you think this would be most noticed the soonest were this to
03:40be, I don't even know how you want to say it, reversed, or if the president's policy would be upheld
03:46and birthright citizenship as we know it were to be altered in some way?
03:52So most likely, if the executive order were to be sustained and were to be implemented,
03:59most likely the effects, it would not be applied retroactively. So this means that the group of
04:06people who would be most harmed by the order are yet to be born. So in that sense, the impact
04:13could not be immediate. It would just unfold over the next couple of decades.
04:19So then how did you make that estimation that these are the industries that were going to be
04:23harmed the hardest? Is it just looking forward at where you expect growth and these individuals
04:28to be working and extrapolating from there?
04:31Yeah, so basically like that. So what we do in our study is we use current data about working age
04:42individuals who benefited from birthright citizenship, learn about what are the occupations, where they
04:49are employed, what are the earnings that they are making in those occupations. And then based on those
04:57data, we project forward to see what to estimate what would be the impact for the future beneficiaries.
05:05So we rely on existing data on current adults to make predictions about what would be the contribution
05:12to the labor market and to the economy, to GDP of current children beneficiaries and future beneficiaries
05:20over the next couple of decades.
05:22You know, Philip, I'm sure you can speak to the fact that this could potentially exacerbate an already
05:28major problem. When we talk about industries like construction, like agriculture, that have already
05:36been on their heels because of the president's mass deportation policy, what would it mean to add
05:42these continued job losses? These industries might not be able to function in some cases, no?
05:47Yeah, so it's a really broad look. In fact, you know, we have an aging population in the United
05:52States right now. Work shortages are likely, labor shortages are going to probably exist well
05:57into the future at a variety of industries, you named a few. What could really be telling in the
06:05decades ahead is the fact without birthright citizenship, these individuals would have no access to
06:10essentially post-secondary education. And we found that nearly two-thirds of those in the past
06:15actually were working in industries that required some high level of higher education. And so you're
06:21going to be missing out on that total workforce, that more educated workforce, because they wouldn't
06:25have had access under a citizenship to actually obtain those kind of jobs. So it would create in many
06:33ways an entirely underclass of individuals that wouldn't even have access perhaps even to jobs that you
06:40mentioned earlier in the construction industry as well as the agricultural industry because of their legal
06:44status. Before we let you guys go, I just want to know, I know you said this is not a
06:49political
06:49study. And before coming on, we were told you guys don't want to talk about the politics of this. You
06:53want to talk about it as an economics issue, something I can get on board with. But I do want
06:57to ask you, you know, from a human perspective, from a perspective of what the U.S. means globally,
07:02what kind of message do you think it's sending to the global economy, to allies, and even people who
07:07aspire to maybe live in the U.S. someday? What kind of message this is sending if, in fact,
07:11the artistic equity order is upheld and birthright citizenship as we know it no longer exists in
07:16its current form? It's a world that we really don't know of in the United States where birthright
07:21citizenship doesn't exist. In fact, that's one of the challenges of the study to be able to
07:27get an idea of what that would be in the future because we don't really have comparisons
07:31to evaluate it. And so looking to the future, I think it certainly speaks to the fact that
07:38if this order were to stand, we would have that underclass. And although in some ways an
07:45undocumented population that's already here today are functioning in our workforce, but they have
07:50limitations because of their legal status, you would further have a population that wouldn't be
07:55able to access education potentially. It would be an experience that really we don't comprehend
08:02totally because we've never seen it before.
08:06Francesca, did you want to add anything to that?
08:08Yeah, I'd like to add that, so if we take a broader, an international perspective,
08:14there are countries where citizenship is not connected to birthplace. It's connected,
08:19it's passed from parents to children, and children get the nationality of their kids.
08:25However, we have to be careful in extrapolating to the U.S. because in those countries, usually
08:32there are already established ways through which children born to, let's say, undocumented
08:39or temporary residents.
08:40Right, that's been the policy for several decades, if not longer. Yeah.
08:44Right, so in those countries, there are ways that those children can eventually naturalize
08:49but currently in the U.S., those pathways do not exist, so it's hard to extrapolate from
08:56the experience of other countries, and it's safer to think about what has been the experience
09:01of the U.S. and the current practice, and this would be a very big departure from that.
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