05/07/2013
H/T One Old Vet
As one would expect in the light of his excellent Amnesty work this year, Daniel Horowitz has come up with an incisive and succinct summary of the Heritage study (pdf): Robert Rector’s Study: Open Borders + Welfare State = Disaster Madison Project Monday May 6th 2013
According to Rector, “over a lifetime, the former unlawful immigrants together would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay $3.1 trillion in taxes.” That’s a net cost of $6.3 trillion in combined federal, state, and local benefits. The annual net cost will be roughly $112 billion. The majority of expense will be the result of increased educational and welfare costs.
Characteristically, Horowitz has some penetrating additional thoughts
Additionally, there are a number of likely factors that could result in higher costs:
• What if there are more than 11.5 million illegals? What if fraudulent documents allow more people to receive amnesty? In 1986, 25% of applications were fraudulent. A similar dynamic now would cost an additional $1.6 trillion, according to Rector.
• This bill allows the amnestied immigrants to bring in spouses and minor children. The cost would top $600 billion per 1 million more family members.
I would also note that the bill doesn’t take into account the costs of birthright citizenship. Every illegal that has a child is able to collect welfare on behalf of his or her American-born kid. While this is a problem even without amnesty, many of them fail to collect those benefits due to fear of being caught. Now they will all collect welfare
He adds
Furthermore, this report does not attempt to quantify the cost of the legal immigration aspects of the bill, although Rector promises to do so in the future. According to Senator Sessions, this bill would bring in 32.7 million immigrants over the next 10 years, along with 25 million new guest workers and non-immigrant residents. …The bill will essentially bring in 2 million new immigrants every year.
On one point, though, Horowitz makes a mistake — no doubt due to haste-
…you simply cannot have an expansive immigration system coupled with unqualified birthright citizenship and a redistributive society
Of course you can — if you want a permanent Democratic majority which will be driven as a practical matter by anti-white animosity.
No doubt what Horowitz meant was that it would be unwise. In my view that is an understatement.
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