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<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nPhoto: Erin Zipper<\/p>\n
The stodgy conservatives over at the Heritage Foundation\u00a0released a long-expected report<\/a>\u00a0today that blasts immigration reform as an economic drain. The report, which is expected to be influential among conservative legislators, comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins work on its massive reform bill this week. A similar Heritage report is credited with helping to derail a previous reform effort, in 2006.<\/p>\n The paper is authored by Robert Rector, who came to fame as a key conservative thinker during the 1996 dismantling of family welfare, and his colleague Jason Richwine. The two claim that the \u201cnet increased fiscal costs generated by amnesty\u201d\u2014by which they mean the 13-year path to citizenship in the Senate bill\u2014will cost $6.3 trillion in benefits and services for legalized immigrants over the next 50 years.<\/p>\n Put simply, the Heritage Foundation\u2019s report is misleading. It focuses only on what the government spends in services and programs, minus what immigrants pay in taxes, while ignoring the vast economic contributions of immigrant communities. Nearly every independent analysis shows that immigration and immigration reform bring net economic growth. Rather than acknowledge this reality, the Heritage report reinforces a familiar trope about people of color as \u201ctakers,\u201d a cultural rather than economic argument that conservatives have consistently invoked when trying to cut safety net programs.<\/p>\n A Flawed Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n There are lots of problems with the report. But quickly, here\u2019s their claim. Because most newly legalized immigrants are low-income, legalization will cost the government $6.3 trillion more in benefits and services than newly legalized immigrants will pay in taxes over the next five decades. The bulk of that spending, they say, is on public education, the safety net, social security and health care. They\u2019re most concerned with paying for school for kids and social security for aging immigrants.<\/p>\n Without digging into whether those calculations are right on their face, the report misses most of the story about immigrants\u2019 relationship to the economy. As with anyone, immigrant communities\u2019 economic impact is more than just how much any given family receives in benefits minus how much we pay in taxes. That\u2019s why the Congressional Budget Office plans to use a so-called dynamic scoring method when it analyzes the immigration bill.<\/p>\n As the Washington Post\u2019s\u00a0Dylan Matthews writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n They also assume [immigration reform has] no other economic impact of any kind. That\u2019s so implausible that even the CBO, which is famously conservative with regards to incorporating economic effects of policies, took direct economic effects of adding people to the workforce into account when evaluating the 2006-7 reform bill. They found that legalization, even paired with increased border security spending, would mildly cut the deficit over 10 years, by about $12 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The CBO plans a similar analysis this year.<\/p>\n Even some on the right side of the GOP challenge the Heritage methodology. Sen. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said in a statement, \u201cThe Congressional Budget Office has found that fixing our broken immigration system could help our economy grow. A proper accounting of immigration reform should take into account these dynamic effects.\u201d<\/p>\n Missing The Point<\/strong><\/p>\n The Heritage report accurately notes that CBO analyses look only 10 years into the future, which means it won\u2019t account for additional benefits that that these immigrants will be eligible for if they become citizens. Immigrants on the 10-year provisional path to citizenship will be denied access to all government programs, including Obamacare healthcare exchanges. But existing research on immigration suggests that legalization provides a boon to the economy in the long term by increasing immigrants\u2019 economic prospects in the future.<\/p>\n Take this\u00a0research from the Immigration Policy Center on the 1986 immigration reform legislation<\/a>. Rector and Richwine claim that immigrants are a drain because in aggregate those who are given legal status will remain poor and uneducated. But the IPC analysis finds precisely the opposite to be true. In the years after the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act:<\/p>\n the educational attainment of IRCA immigrants increased substantially, their poverty rates fell dramatically, and their home ownership rates improved tremendously. Moreover, their real wages rose, many of them moved into managerial positions, and the vast majority did not depend upon public assistance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And immigrants tend to stimulate the economy by starting businesses. Here\u2019s what the\u00a0Brookings Institute<\/a>has to say:<\/p>\n immigrants are 30 percent more likely to form new businesses than U.S.-born citizens\u2026Such investments in new businesses and in research may provide spillover benefits to U.S.-born workers by enhancing job creation and by increasing innovation among their U.S.-born peers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The same is true for of immigrants who don\u2019t have lots of education, especially at the local level where immigration has for years been \u201crevitalizing small-town America once plagued with a shrinking tax base and dim prospects for economic growth,\u201d the\u00a0Wall Street Journal reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another problem with the report. The research lists public education as the most costly part of government spending on immigrant families\u2014$13,000 of the annual $24,000 the authors say taxpayers spend on a family. That\u2019s an absurd thing to be upset about. Education for all Americans is expensive, but it\u2019s an investment in our collective future. Moreover, the majority of the kids in question were born here in the United States. They\u2019re not immigrants at all, according to our Constitution.<\/p>\n If you want to read a filing cabinet full of studies on the positive economic impact of immigration reform, check out this\u00a0Immigration Policy Center<\/a>\u00a0fact sheet.<\/p>\n But facts aren\u2019t the point of the Heritage study. The point is to provide an escape hatch for Republicans who oppose the broadly popular legislation. Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.,\u00a0told the NY Times\u00a0<\/a>he hoped to hold the bill up in committee long enough for it to die. \u201cThe longer this legislation is available for public review, the worse it\u2019s going to be perceived,\u201d he said Monday. \u201cThe longer it lays out there, the worse it\u2019s going to smell.\u201d As Senators propose amendments this week, don\u2019t be surprised to see lawmakers, including those who oppose reform outright, citing the Heritage Foundation in an effort to stench up the room.<\/p>\n