A new study from the George W. Bush Institute on the potential economic benefit of immigration highlights the divide amongst conservatives on the hot-button issue.
The Bush Institute’s study, "Growth and Immigration: A Handbook of Vital Immigration and Economic Growth Statistics," suggests that removing legal barriers to immigration and government-imposed inefficiencies would be good for the economy and would increase real GDP growth in the long term.
"One of the things we discovered was, there was a lot of interest in immigration reform as a method of increasing economic growth," said Ambassador Jim Glassman, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. "That is where our interests lie … All of this work is around the idea that if we get immigration right, that is a major way to boost economic growth."
Dr. George Borjas, a professor of economics and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, argued that this was beside the point.
Borjas and the Center for Immigration Studies produced a study titled "Immigration and the American Worker," which determines immigration reform will not have such an positive affect on the U.S workforce.
Rather than produce significant GDP growth, Borjas argues that the result of legal and illegal immigration is actually "economic redistribution."
"The biggest winners from immigration are owners of businesses that employ a lot of immigrant labor and other users of immigration labor. The other big winners are the immigrants themselves," wrote Borjas. "But some native-born Americans have lost, and these losers likely include a disproportionate number of the poorest Americans."
Meanwhile, Republican senators opposed to the immigration reform bills championed by the "Gang of Eight" have focused on border security concerns.
Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) have criticized S.744 for "not secur[ing] the border first."
The vote on the "Corker-Hoeven Amendment" was considered to be a "test run" for the status of the overall bill. Fifteen Republicans supported the amendment and are seen as likely supporters of the final legislation.
When asked about the persistent focus on border security amongst lawmakers and the public, Glassman told the Washington Free Beacon, "This obsession with border security I think is evidence of the fact that not enough members of Congress are really looking at the economic aspect of this. They seem to be focused, many of them, not all of them, but many are focused on what I think is a tangential issue."
The concern of legislators over border security may stem from polling numbers.
A poll by CNN/ORC International showed that 62 percent of Americans believe border security should be the top priority of U.S. immigration policy.
Matthew Denhart, the author of the Bush Institute study, said Americans should welcome growth regardless of who primarily benefits.
"What [the Bush Institute is] focused on is the growth effect of immigrants. We’re not overly concerned about where the benefits go initially because we know that the growth generally benefits all Americans." Denhart told the Free Beacon. "When you have strong growth, it rises all boats."
Denhart’s work also argues that immigrants expand the economy because they are "remarkably innovative." To a degree, all immigrants are "entrepreneurial" because the "act of immigrating to our shores" in itself is an entrepreneurial action.
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, disagreed with this line of thinking.
"Those kinds of statistics do not place it in the demographic context," Camarota told the Free Beacon. "You need to know the numerator and the denominator and when you do, there is no meaningful difference between immigrants and natives."
Camarota cited, statistics from Table 13 of his report "Immigrants in the United States," which found that the self-employment rate for individuals under the age of 25 was 11.5 percent for all immigrants and 11.7 percent for native-born individuals.
On the whole, Camarota, says "entrepreneurship is neither lacking nor is it a distinguishing characteristic of immigrants overall."