The White House’s claim that comprehensive immigration reform would drive down the government’s budget deficit is meeting pushback.
President Obama on Tuesday released a fact sheet attached to his proposed $4.1 trillion budget that said striking an immigration deal that legalizes millions of peopleliving in the U.S. would expand the tax base and save taxpayers $170 billion over 10 years and almost $1 trillion over two decades, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate.
“Even if the claims are to be believed, the first thing to point out is that $170 billion over 10 years works out to $17 billion per year. Currently, the combined federal, state and local costs for illegal immigration are more than $100 billion per year,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates to severely limit immigration, citing the group’s 2011 report.
Mehlman said illegal immigrants are disproportionately low-skilled and poorly educated, adding that legalizing millions of people with those characteristics would increase the costs imposed on citizens rather than save taxpayers money.
An anonymous congressional staffer also criticized Obama’s announcement, calling it a “laughable budget gimmick.”
“It ignores the fact that most of the legalized population would not begin collecting Medicare or Social Security inside the CBO’s 10-year window,” a GOP congressional aide told the Washington Examiner. “Any honest person knows that over the long term, once the legalized population has access to the entire welfare system and social safety net, the type of comprehensive reform considered in 2013 would be a budget-buster.”
Obama has said he plans to implement an immigration deal similar to the failed 2013 Gang of Eight bill by the end of his final year of office.
