According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, Democrats’ hope to include a complete “pathway to citizenship,” also known as amnesty, in the Budget Reconciliation bill would cost the Federal government more than $500 billion over the next few decades.
The CBO’s analysis states that most of the $500 billion would come from the costs of Social Security, Medicare, and other social spending programs that newly legalized immigrants would be allowed to access.
The nonpartisan budget agency analyzed what became known as Democrats’ “Plan A” amnesty which would expand the “window of eligibility for illegal immigrants to adjust their status to legal immigrants, and to expand the availability of green cards, or legal immigrant visas, to more foreign citizens,” reports the Washington Times.
The Washington Times added:
The total cost of the immigration provisions over the next decade comes to about $140 billion, offset by about $19 billion in new revenue. The two decades after that would be even more expensive for the federal government, costing more than $563 billion in new spending and sapping about $2 billion from revenue.
The analysis looked at the costs to the federal government but did not analyze the impact on the broader U.S. economy.
Pro-amnesty advocates state that the impact on the broader economy is where the ‘true’ benefits of amnesty can be found. In the past, the CBO has said that more legal workers will create a larger GDP; however, the CBO has also stated that more legal workers mean a smaller per capita GDP.
The original plan scored by the CBO envisioned legalizing any illegal aliens with “Dreamer” status or other types of special humanitarian protections and alien farmworkers and those Congressional Democrats consider “essential” workers. Initial estimates for this plan suggested that the “Plan A” amnesty could cover up to 8 million illegal aliens in the country.
This particular plan was shot down by the Senate Parliamentarian on Sept. 19th for failing to follow the Byrd Rule, which governs what can and cannot be added to a budget reconciliation bill. She stated at the time:
The question before us is whether a series of proposed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that remove existing barriers to adjustment of status to that of lawful permanent resident (LPR) for a variety of existing and newly created classes of immigrants and non-immigrants, including many not legally present in the United States, is a policy change that substantially outweighs the budgetary impact of that change. We believe it is, and we find that the material from previous reconciliation bills cited as support for the current proposal is distinguishable or not controlling on this issue.
For the CBO analysis, please click here.
For more on the story, please visit The Washington Times.
