A new perspective on capital migration: social security, taxation, and noncitizen farmworkers

Shayak Sarkar

Chapter 10 in Taxation, Citizenship and Democracy in the 21st Century, 2024, pp 187-204 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter describes capital migration in migrant farmworkers’ lives. First, I note the law’s general recognition of intertwined migrations of people and capital—for example, Congress facilitates capital investment by permitting intracompany employee transfers. Second, and most significantly, I describe this idea of capital migration through our farmlands rather than firms. Capital flows—namely Social Security benefits—are denied to a very narrow class of immigrant workers: foreign workers in American agriculture. I narrate the legislative history of the exclusion, which persists even as both citizen workers in agriculture and most migrant workers outside agriculture face no such exclusion. Third and finally, I consider the exclusion’s consequences. In the absence of employer payroll taxes, migrant workers provide cheaper labor than citizens. This disparity disadvantages both migrant and local workers, militating for the exclusion’s end.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Law - Academic; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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