SENIOR LIVING: The Case for Immigrants and Senior Entitlement Progra= ms

SENIOR LIVING= : The Case for Immigrants and Boomers

By FRANK KENN= EY Director, Grant County Senior Services

Sometime back we wrote about our aging population and = the shrinking workforce here in the United States.= A smaller labor pool puts a huge tax burden on workers to support ou= r growing senior entitlement programs. However, there is one solution that is getting more and more visible. Immigration.

Miriam Jordan, a journalist with the Wall Street Journ= al predicts that “the quality of life for some 80 million graying baby boomers in the U.S. may depend in large part on the fortunes of another high-profile demographic group: millions of mostly Hispanic immigrants and their children.”

Ms Jordan believes that with a major part of the nation’s population entering its retirement years and birth rates fal= ling domestically, the shortfall in the work force will be filled by immigrants = and their offspring. How that gro= up fares economically in the years ahead could have a big impact on everything from the kind of medical services baby boomers receive to the prices they c= an get for their homes.

“Immigrants and baby boomers are two groups whose destinies are converging in the next 20 years,” says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the Univer= sity of Southern California. He continues, “Baby boomers = will surrender their economic role to this generation of immigrants and their children,” who will evolve into a critical pool of laborers and taxpayers, he says.

Immigration issues have become a hot topic in Washington, with a “compromise plan” ha= shed out by a bipartisan group of senators, offering would-be illegals a legitim= ate route into America, through a temporary guest-worker program.&= nbsp; “The idea is that if the front door is ajar, no one will feel = the need to break in at the back,” according to an article in = the May 31^st edition of The Economist. The newspaper goes on to say that “unskilled labour is increasingly scarce in America, (and) in response, i= llegal immigration has proved to be a fairly efficient system for matching willing workers with eager employers. Some 24% of farm workers, 17% of cleaners and 14% of construction workers are foreigners doing their jobs illicitly.”

Opponents to the “compromise plan” complai= n of a ‘fiscal cost.’ Il= legal migrants, with their low skills and large families, are likely to consume m= ore in government services, such as education and health care, than they pay in taxes. The Economist notes th= at “today’s taxpayers may suffer—they must pay for educating= the children of illegal immigrants. But tomorrow’s may gain—these first-gene= ration Americans will likely earn far more than their parents, adding to the pot of taxes in the future.”

As we can see, there are ample notice, research, and p= lans being developed these days dealing with the projected costs to taxpayers who must support senior entitlements.

This projected burden will be hard for the economy to absorb, and will require some difficult choices. Those may include tax increases, b= enefit cuts for seniors, increases in the taxable income of working-age residents,= as well as efforts to attract more immigrants to fill out the work force.

Prof. Myers, author of the recent book “Immigran= ts and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America,” to= ld congressional leaders at a hearing recently, that the current influx of immigrants, about 1.5 million annually, is softening the impact of the bulg= ing population of seniors relative to working-age adults by a bout a quarter fr= om what it would be without immigration. Boosting immigration would relieve more pressure, he and other exper= ts say.

But, given the nation’s polarizing debate over i= llegal immigration, the U.S= . is unlikely to implement policies to attract many newcomers in the near future. That suggests that on= e of the country’s most pressing tasks may be improving the earnings prosp= ects of its youngsters, especially Latino youth, who will have to carry much of = the financial burden for the “supersize “ boome= r generation.

One of the challenges is that Americans don’t se= em to be aware of the vital role the next generation will play. The predominantly white senior cit= izens and boomers, who account for the majority of the nation’s decision makers, often vote against measures to boost services or raise taxes for schools increasingly populated by Hispanics. That’s a problem because bet= ter education is the ticket to prosperity for those on whose tax dollars boomers will rely.

“If I’m an old white person, I better be interested in how these young, Hispanic kids are doing,” says Ron Cro= uch, director of Kentucky’s State Data Center at the University of Louis= ville. Between 1990 and 2005, blacks and Hispanics, including immigrants, accounted for 80% of all population growth= in the U.S.= They accounted for all the populat= ion growth among those 45 and younger, according to the Census Bureau. That represents both the younger e= nd of the current work force and the nation’s future labor pool.

This maturing younger population will need to be ready= for opportunities far beyond the fields, construction sites and nursing homes t= hat employed many of their parents, Mr. Crouch says. They will also need to be “architects, business owners, doctors and scientists,” he adds.=

For baby boomers, the economic status of the new gener= ation will affect more than the kind of quality of services the government has available. It will also affec= t the value of a major asset for many boomers: their homes.

Prof. Myer’s studies show a pattern of upward mo= bility into homeownership by immigrants and their children. By 2005, four of the top ten surna= mes among home buyers nationwide were Spanish, up from only two in 2000, and yo= ung Latinos will become the largest market for the homes of white boomers as the latter seek to downsize or cash out in the near future.

“We need to cultivate new home buyers; it requir= es moving more Latino kids through high school and college,” says Prof. Myers, “It’s not (just) for the good of Latinos. It’s for the good of the nation.”

For more information on the subject of our aging workf= orce, or any other topic relating to aging, contact this author at 505-388-2523 o= r rsvpgrant@zianet.com.