(WAPO)...Amid the blizzard of data concerning immigrants' effects on wages, welfare and municipal budgets, the essential point is this: The latest wave of immigrants -- legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled -- has stimulated enormous economic activity and wealth generation in this country, and it is implausible that the American economy would fare as well without them. A recent study using data collected through 2004 found that Hispanics in North Carolina (many of them immigrants, both legal and illegal) contributed 6 million in state taxes while costing about 7 million in public education, corrections and health care. That nets out to a modest million drain on state coffers. But the study, by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also found that that deficit was dwarfed by the fact that Hispanics contributed more than billion, or some 3 percent, to the state's economy in 2004, an amount projected to double by 2009. The North Carolina study further found that adults of prime working age (18-44) comprised a much larger portion of Hispanic households than non-Hispanic ones; that the state's 9,000-plus Hispanic-owned businesses were poised for rapid expansion; and the state's exports to Latin America, which account for 70,000 jobs, are booming, thanks partly to the swift growth of the Hispanic population. Little wonder that the study was conducted for the North Carolina Bankers Association; immigrants are good for business. Similar studies in Arkansas, Texas and elsewhere have arrived at like-minded conclusions.

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