In yet another cheerleading ploy for the President to bypass the Constitution, the Center for American Progress released a flawed report touting the economic benefits should the President act on his own to hand amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
At the heart of their argument is the claim that legalizing illegal aliens would result in $44.96 billion in revenue from payroll taxes within five years.
This, of course, assumes that employers who hire illegally will convert to a legal workforce once the Obama amnesty is in place, either out of good will or because the administration will crackdown on workplace enforcement. History indicates that neither scenario is likely. It also assumes that legalization would lead to increased earnings for most illegal aliens, a CAP claim that has been thoroughly debunked.
But let’s put our rose-colored glasses on and pretend that employers start paying payroll taxes and amnestied aliens actually obtain higher paying jobs. This population is still a net drain when benefits are taken into account. States (which shoulder majority of the costs of illegal immigration) spend $84 billion annually to subsidize illegal immigration. While collecting $44.9 billion in payroll taxes will help the federal government (assuming employers switch to a legal workforce), an amnesty without border security would draw more illegal immigration increasing the financial burden on states.
CAP doesn’t want to consider net costs because it doesn’t fit with their agenda—just like they don’t want to concede that employers won’t willingly convert to a legal workforce and the Obama administration won’t make them.
If the President enacts his own executive amnesty, the more likely scenario is that employers and the Obama administration will stick with the status quo. A new wave of illegal aliens will continue to provide employers with a discounted labor force while they wait for their chance at the next amnesty. Meanwhile, the newly amnestied population will compete for jobs in an economy that doesn’t produce enough jobs for the legal American workforce.
Alternately, the same, or greater, tax revenues could be realized by enforcing laws against the employment of illegal aliens and allowing those jobs to be filled by legal U.S. workers. The quid pro quo assumption that a president can hold enforcement of laws hostage to achieve his policy goals is troubling far beyond just the issue of immigration.
CAP’s new report is nothing more than a thinly veiled piece of propaganda promoting poor policy and dangerous precedent.
9 Comments
If granting amnesty, legal status, and U.S. citizenship to millions of unauthorized aliens is so wildly popular with the American people, why did Senator Harry Reid go over to the White House to beg Mr Obama to delay his EXECUTIVE AMNESTY until after the November 4th mid term election? The truth is amnesty is about as popular as a skunk at a family picnic with most American voters and an unlawful executive amnesty (Article 1, Section 8 U.S.C.) is pure political poison that would set off a dangerous Constitutional crisis in this country.
The Recent Central American Kid Dump Into America
Which is clear/serious child abuse and neglect in any country’s law books…..was the last straw for the American people. It made immigration the #1 issue too.
No wonder the NWO news didn’t report it or glossed over it.
Larry the same answer I have for you…if it was not that popular why The Republicans did not call it for a vote and get it over with…………….THAT IS YOUR ANSWER.
Nor do they address the money sent back to Mexico [21 billion for them alone] and other countries in remittances that are lost to our local economies. Those countries have to be laughing behind our backs at how stupid we are. We allow their poorest citizens to stay here illegally, give them lots of benefits when they have US born children, and they
send a big part of their earnings back home where it boosts their economies. The president of Mexico was just in California thanking the state for handing benefits to his citizens here. Something Mexico would not do there. Be a foreigner there and apply for welfare and you’re gone.
Leland wake up!!!..really what benefits……….most of them work…..pay taxes and spend their money here….some abuse the system…don;t Americans too? COME ON!@!@!
Your usual reading comprehension problems? What benefits, you ask. The ones that the president of Mexico thanked California for handing out to his countrymen. Something Mexico would not do for citizens of other countries.
for the same illiteracy of yours……….that still do you get….the majority do not get benefits…stop your illusions and your false ideas….
California’s many illegal aliens without health coverage, if given amnesty will now have access to taxpayer financed Medi-Cal, although many probably use it already. There is a network of Medi-Cal financed Health Centers in Northern California aptly named La Clinica De La Raza, or The Clinic of the Race. Its symbol is the Aztlan Eagle symbolizing the territory to be reclaimed in the Reconquista of the American Southwest. Of course they have pregnancy services, because they will continue to need lots of anchor babies so California can become the “other Mexico” as the President of Mexico recently described the State. Its website is laclinica.org .
Curious timing of this pro-open-borders propaganda with the release of the following news story by The Hill today….
Two months before Election Day, worst jobs report of the year
By Vicki Needham – 09/05/14 08:39 AM EDT
The U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in August, the worst showing of the year….
BTW, this is not the first time that such wishful thinking on the part of pro-open-borders advocates has been advanced.