Immigration: Right-Wing Immigration Foes Get Burned by Reality

[boutons_deux]

CBO projected that the Senate bill would cut the dreaded federal deficit by $197 billion over the next ten years, and $700 billion more in the decade after that.

Cheered on by the Heritage Foundation – which has been squishy on immigration reform in the past and is now trying to shore up its creds with the Tea Party set – Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, one of the staunchest opponents of immigration reform (who only incidentally happens to be a “ vile racist”) requested that the CBO analyze the impacts of the law beyond its usual 10-year window.


So they did. In addition to the positive impact on the budget, CBO says 8 million unauthorized immigrants would likely come out of the shadows (after paying $1,000 fine and jumping through some other hoops). By 2023, CBO estimates a small hit of 0.1 percent to native-born workers' wages, but says the reforms would boost native wages by 0.5 percent in 2033.
Overall, as Ezra Klein puts it:

The bill’s overall effect on the overall economy is unambiguously positive: CBO expects real GDP to increase by 3.3 percent by 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033. The reasoning here is a bit more complex: It’s not just that the bill would mean more workers, but that it would mean more productive workers. CBO says that the law would “lead to slightly higher productivity of both labor and capital because the increase in immigration — particularly of highly skilled immigrants — would tend to generate additional technological advancements, such as new inventions and improvements in production processes.”

In 2006, the Texas State Comptroller – a Republican – did the first comprehensive study of the fiscal impact of unauthorized immigration on a state with a very high number of foreign-born. Unfortunately, it only looked at the undo ented. And while it found some significant strain being put on local budgets (much of it from law enforcement), state-wide, “undo ented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received.”

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...wrong-says-cbo

[RandomGuy]

http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/c...mmigration.pdf

There is the report, for those who care to read it.

On balance, the economic impacts not included in the cost estimate would have no
significant net effect on federal budget deficits during the coming decade and would
reduce deficits during the following decade. Taking into account a limited set of
economic effects, the cost estimate shows that changes in direct spending and
revenues under the legislation would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion
over the 2014–2023 period and by roughly $700 billion over the 2024–2033 period.

Roughly a trillion dollars less goverment borrowing.

The right-wing nutter response is of course ad hominem.

"the CBO doesn't have a good track record"= Ted Cruz

Amnesty now, and make it fairly affordable. Get the millions of people out of the woodworks and into the tax base.

[boutons_deux]

tea bagger nutter Cruz was on NPR this morning, along with his father.

Their myopic perspective is that since his father came in legally (after some fraud in Cuba to get an exit visa, and obtaing/renouncing Canandian citizenship), then it would be unfair to legal immigrants and visa demanders to grant citizenship.

Which is all bull since anybody knows the Repugs don't want citizenship "amnesty" (House Repugs will kill immigration reform and the electoral chances in '14 and '16) since the Have-Not immigrants tend ever more heavily to vote Dem, if they bother to vote.

"unfair" is as always a smokescreen like to hide the Repug politics, as if Repugs and tea baggers gave a stinking about "fairness" above smash-mouth dirty politics.