A study by Robert Rector estimates that illegal aliens receiving executive amnesty will receive well over a trillion dollars in Social Security and Medicare benefits. The study comes as part of prepared testimony that Rector gave to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the high entitlement costs of granting legal status to millions of illegal aliens.
Based on Rector’s calculations, which assume that at least 3.97 illegal immigrants would apply for and receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA), and that the average DAPA beneficiary would have a 10th grade education, the costs would be immense.
Specifically, in 2010 dollars, the lifetime costs of Social Security benefits to DAPA beneficiaries would be about $1.3 trillion.
He further estimates that DAPA recipients would $7.8 billion each year once they have access to the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the refundable Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). Further, the retroactive costs of the EITC and ACTC— current IRS policy will allow amnesty recipients to claim up to three years of tax benefits for illegal work — Rector expects to be as high as $23.5 billion.
“On average, the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits currently received, the EITC and ACTC cash, and potential Obamacare benefits would come to $17,800 per year per DAPA family,” Rector’s testimony reads. “The aggregate cost would be over $35 billion per year.”
In terms of what DAPA eligible individuals would contribute in tax payments once they are “on the books,” Rector estimates that “Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) and federal income tax revenues would increase by about $7.2 billion per year.”
“Nonetheless, the increase in tax revenue would be equaled or outweighed by the increase in EITC and ACTC cash payments,” the testimony concludes. “The value of total means-tested welfare benefits received by DAPA eligible families exceeded the value of FICA and federal income tax payments made by those families before the executive action and will continue to do so after the action as well.”
Rector further assumes that the granting of executive amnesty “will encourage increased illegal immigration in the future, imposing further costs on taxpayers.”
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