Free Republic

Two radically different theories are raging across the conservative movement about amnesty for illegal aliens and its effect on our economy. How could the same movement grounded on the same conceptual principles come to two totally different conclusions? I was honored to interview Derrick Morgan, Vice President of the Heritage Foundation, on May 8 as a co-host of the Conservative Commandos radio show. I asked Derrick Morgan these questions, and the Heritage vice president made the entire issue crystal-clear. So, would immigration reform under the "Gang of Eight's" proposal cause our economy to expand, increase wages for everyone, and more...

Economic fallacies are being hurled at the Heritage Foundation to attack its study of amnesty for illegal immigrants. On May 6, Heritage released its study calculating a $6.3 trillion price tag for the “Gang of Eight” proposal. Amnesty promoters recall that a similar study by Heritage blocked amnesty in 2007. To implement the Gang of Eight’s “Muriel Boat Lift, The Sequel” amnesty advocates seek to discredit the study. So they accuse Heritage of ignoring the expansion of the U.S. economy that amnesty will cause. Therefore, they say, Heritage over-states the true cost of amnesty at $6.3 trillion. They offer no...

Grover Norquist, champion of Islamism infiltration, is working to advance the cause of tax reform by backing an illegal alien amnesty that will impose a whopping economic burden on the country… leading to higher taxes. The contradiction is obvious. If you’re going to legalize 12 million undocumented Democrats plus all their family members then you are tremendously boosting the welfare state on the receiving end and the voting end. The only way that the pro-amnesty side can win the amnesty debate is by not having it. And that means going after any sources of facts and taking them down. The...

Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants will greatly increase long-term costs to the taxpayer. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would, over time, increase their use of means-tested welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. Fiscal costs would rise in the intermediate term and increase dramatically when amnesty recipients reach retirement. Although it is difficult to provide a precise estimate, it seems likely that if 10 million adult illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. were granted amnesty, the net retirement cost to government (benefits minus taxes) could be over $2.6 trillion.

This week, the Obama administration announced it will create a new poverty-measurement system that will eventually displace the current poverty measure. This new measure, which has little or nothing to do with actual poverty, will serve as the propaganda tool in Obama’s endless quest to “spread the wealth.” Under the new measure, a family will be judged “poor” if its income falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there, but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living...

Welfare Revisited by: Allie Winegar Duzett, September 30, 2009 Senior Research Fellow on Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation Robert Rector said at the September 22, 2009 Conservative Bloggers Briefing that while some blame military expenses for bankrupting the United States, 2.5 times more money has been spent on the “war on poverty” than has been spent on the military in all of United States history. Rector went on to explain that Americans spend about $8 billion a year on the war on poverty; if there are 40 million poor in America, this means we spend about $20,000 per person...

If enacted, the Senate stimulus bill would fund over $100 billion in new government construction projects with the goal of providing additional jobs to unemployed Americans. The House-passed stimulus bill contains explicit language to bar employment of illegal immigrants in these construction projects. However, the Senate bill deliberately omits this language. If the Senate version of the bill becomes law, a great number of the workers employed in government construction programs will, in fact, be illegal immigrants. About one out of seven (or 15 percent) of workers employed in construction in the U.S. is an illegal immigrant.[1] Unless strong mechanisms...

Monday's column from the Administration's Karl Zinsmeister and Edward Lazear ("Lead Weight or Gold Mine: What are the True Costs of Immigration?" June 25, RCP) is a study in misdirection and misstatement. Since they devote much of their piece to attacking my research, I'd like to set the record straight. Let's start with a brief review of what my research into the fiscal cost of low-skill households has actually found: * Low-skill individuals (i.e., those without a high school degree) receive far more in benefits and services than they pay in taxes. * The net fiscal cost of the families...

Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report entitled "Immigration's Economic Impact" which defended the President's promotion of the Senate's "comprehensive" immigration legislation (S.1348).[1] On June 25, the White House issued a follow-up editorial elaborating on the points made in the CEA report.[2] These publications criticized Heritage Foundation research on the fiscal costs of low skill immigration and amnesty. The Heritage research criticized by the White House made the following basic points about immigration and its costs: 1. Individuals without a high school degree impose significant net costs (the extent to which benefits and services received...

  June 18, 2007Setting the Record Straight: Illegal Immigrants Will Receive Welfare Under Senate Bill by Robert E. Rector WebMemo #1509  In criticizing recent Heritage Foundation research on the cost of low-skill immigration and amnesty, proponents of the Senate immigration legislation (S. 1348), including Administration spokesmen, have falsely claimed that the proposal would not give illegal immigrants access to the U.S. welfare system.[1] While provisions of the Senate bill would delay illegal immigrants' access to welfare for several years, over time nearly all amnesty recipients would be offered legal permanent residence and access to more than 60 federal means-tested welfare...

The immigration reform bill recently announced in the U.S. Senate should be titled the Act to Destroy the Republican Party because it pits President George W. Bush against the majority of the Republican Party that elected him. When Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., appeared as the centerpiece of the photo-op announcing it, that told the grass roots all they needed to know about the politics of the deal trumpeted as bipartisan. The Bush administration has been tone deaf about how offensive some find the words "comprehensive" and "compromise." The American people want border security that they can see with their own...

Robert Rector stirred up the puddin' inside the beltway yesterday. Who is Robert Rector? He is the Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation specializing in welfare, poverty and marriage. He is a leading and respected authority in Washington on poverty and the U.S. welfare system. Yesterday Heritage released a special report written by Rector and Christine Kim titled "The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer." You can read the entire report right here [pdf], or you can click here for the executive summary. You aren't going to hear very much about this report from the mainstream...

Future costs for illegal immigrants in the United States will reach a half a trillion dollars, a Heritage Foundation researcher said Wednesday at congressional hearing in San Diego. The influx of illegal immigrants has effectively "imported about 10 million high school dropouts into the United States," said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in welfare and family issues for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Rector testified before the House Judiciary Committee, which convened at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot for one in a series of hearings on illegal immigration this month. The hearings are a rebuttal to a Senate bill...

Guest Workers Aren't Cheap; They're Expensive President Bush entered the White House in 2001 hoping he would be known in history books as the education president who improved public school standards with "No child left behind." It now looks like his legacy will really be "No illegal alien left behind." As President Bush's poll numbers drop even among his base, the question most frequently asked by angry Republicans is, why, oh why, is Bush so stubbornly rejecting the advice of his supporters even though that advice is consistent with the thunderous message from public opinion surveys? The reliable Rasmussen survey,...

The debate in Washington over reforming America's immigration laws has produced not only heated rhetoric but a few fantastic claims. Few are wilder than a prediction from a well-known think-tank that the reform bill just passed by the Senate will result in 103 million legal immigrants to the United States during the next 20 years. In a "Web Memo" from the Heritage Foundation, author Robert Rector claims that the Hagel-Martinez immigration bill (S. 2611) would unleash a flood of chain migration that would overwhelm America's capacity to absorb so many people. He calculates that the bill would not only allow...

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611), which recently passed the Senate, provides amnesty to illegal immigrants and creates a massive “guest worker” for life program. Earlier this month, The Heritage Foundation released an analysis calculating that the bill, if enacted, likely would result in 103 million immigrants obtaining legal status or entering in the U.S. legally over the next twenty years. [1] All of these individuals would have the right to permanent residence and could become citizens and vote in U.S. elections. On May 18th, the White House Office of Media Affairs issued a press release challenging the Heritage...