Reading their model, it seems to me they’re saying that economic activity will increase because illegals doing under the table jobs will legalize, then they’ll get higher wages, and that will result in the nirvana of economic activity lifting everybody’s boats.
They don’t seem to allow for:
1. Under-the-table businesses not wanting to go legal and pay higher wages.
2. New illegals flooding in to take those under-the-table jobs at the same low wages, turning the new legals into unemployed welfare clients.
3. Higher unemployment and welfare costs
From the Remi report:
***We attribute the increase in wages following legalization to two causes, which we categorize as compliance and productivity. The first category, compliance, represents an increase in wages, without any productivity gains, that results from employers more closely conforming to labor legislation such as minimum wage and overtime requirements. The second category, labor productivity, represents pay increases that occur in conjunction with increases in labor productivity.***
And this is what passes for intelligence in Washington DC.
Their model on page 23 also says that employment is a function of them taking into account: (http://www.remi.com/download/Key%20Components%20of%20Immigration%20Reform.pdf)
all government spending, all consumer spending, all investment, all exports, and the entire domestic market.
And they plug whatever wild assumptions in and then come out with their number on employment.
Well, it describes DC idiocy fairly well.