Analysis debunks White House report on amnesty benefits
According to the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, a recent White House report citing the economic benefits of granting amnesty and citizenship to illegal aliens is misleading and based on dubious assumptions. His study suggests the overall cost to taxpayers of such an amnesty is likely to exceed $6 trillion.
The White House report claims that amnesty would increase the income of Americans by $791 billion over the next decade. Rector say the income boost claim is misleading because the amnestied illegal aliens themselves would benefit the most through higher wages. And the magnitude of the increase is faulty because the underlying assumptions claim their wages would increase by a full 25 percent. According to federal data, the 1986 amnesty increased illegal-alien wages by only 5–10 percent.
The report also claims that amnesty would create almost 2 million new jobs for current citizens over the next decade and increase their income by about $130 billion. Rector says the simplistic Keynesian economic assumptions used to generate these figures have been “discredited for decades.”
Moreover, Rector said the White House report ignores the net costs associated with amnesty and citizenship. Millions of illegal aliens would be eligible for Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, and more than 80 different means-tested welfare programs such as food stamps and public housing. And the benefits they receive will greatly exceed the taxes they pay
Rector found that legal immigrants without a high school diploma receive $5 in government benefits for every $1 in taxes paid each year. That means the annual net cost of the amnesty to taxpayers would be about $37,000 per household.
Read Robert Rector’s article.