WASHINGTON: Granting legal status to 11 million undocumented foreigners living in the United States would significantly add to US government budget deficits, according to a study released yesterday by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Heritage, a think-tank headed by former US Senator Jim DeMint, has assumed a leading role in opposition to a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill being considered by the US Senate.
It is only the first of what is expected to be a flurry of competing studies attempting to influence the upcoming immigration debate.
The legislation couples the legalisation proposal with a new programme to admit high-skilled and low-skilled workers to fill jobs that industry and agriculture say are going begging because of a shortage of available US workers. The Heritage study did not look at the impact on the economy of those provisions.
Coming three days before the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin the immigration measure, the Heritage Foundation study estimated that legalising the 11 million would put a severe strain on government programmes.
Over the next 50 years, it would cost taxpayers a net $6.3trn, according to DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina and a favourite of the conservative Tea Party movement. That would work out to $124bn a year on average.
The study said that over the course of their lives, these undocumented immigrants-turned-citizens would receive $9.4trn in government benefits and services and pay only $3.1trn in taxes.
The government benefits and services include healthcare, Social Security, public education, aid to low-income families and a range of other programmes.
The Heritage Foundation report was blasted by other conservatives, even before it was issued. Cato Institute, in a website posting over the weekend, said that the Heritage Foundation study was an update of a “fatally flawed” analysis it issued in 2007.
The earlier findings, according to the Cato Institute, failed to take into account the potential economic benefits of integrating 11 million illegal residents into society.
It specifically mentioned the likelihood of growing tax revenues and economic expansion as a result of broadening the legal US workforce and population.
Following the 2012 elections in which around 70 percent of Hispanic-American voters supported the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, Republicans began re-examining their opposition to immigration reforms, including providing a “pathway to citizenship” for the 11 million.
REUTERS
