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Conservatives Debate Economic Impact of Immigration

Panel discusses economic effects of immigration reform

Immigration reform rally / AP
May 29, 2013

Congress should view immigration reform as an economic issue, experts said Wednesday.

Panelists discussed the effects of immigration reform on the U.S. economy at the Bipartisan Policy Center Wednesday morning. The most prominent issue is the ways in which immigration reform would impact the redistributive welfare system.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, expressed concern that the immigration reform bill, which would grant amnesty to 11 million immigrants, would increase the national deficit.

Providing immigrants amnesty would give 11 million more people access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, he said.

The average education level achieved by illegal immigrants is the 10th grade, according to Rector. His research looked at how much legal immigrants of the same education level cost U.S. taxpayers. He found that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would lead to an average deficit of $23,000 per household.

The bill would have a cost of about $6 trillion, and it would be "funded by the deficit," Rector said.

Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, agreed. Low skilled workers tend to be a "fiscal drain" on the economy, taking in more benefits than they pay in taxes, he said.

Robert Lynch, visiting senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, disagreed. He argued that taxes taken in by the government would increase dramatically if illegal immigrants were given legal status and said illegal immigrants would seek out more productive jobs.

Lynch conceded that adding illegal immigrants would add to the deficit, but he said doing nothing to address the immigration situation would also add to the deficit.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, acknowledged the broken welfare system and agreed with Lynch that adding immigrants would help grow the economy.

"It will be way easier to fix the problem [of the welfare system] in a more rapidly growing, more vibrant economy," he said.

According to Camarota, the current immigration bill does not address the economic needs of the country.

The bill is "out of touch with the actual reality American workers are facing," Camarota said.

He pointed out that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would harm low-skilled workers more than those with some level of higher education due to increased competition.

Holtz-Eakin said it is hard to examine the long-term effects of the immigration bill because it is impossible to predict other reforms that Congress could pass, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reforms.

Adding that no immigration bill could be perfect, given the congressional desire to address every side of the issue, Holtz-Eakin said the bill is about getting a "coalition of disgruntled to vote yes."

"This bill will disgruntle many," he said.