Heritage Foundation: Senate "Compromise" Means 100 Million+ Guest Workers in 20 Years

"If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years—fully one-third of the current population of the United States," writes Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.

"Much attention has been given to the fact that the bill grants amnesty to some 10 million illegal immigrants. Little or no attention has been given to the fact that the bill would quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the United States, raising, over time, the inflow of legal immigrants from around one million per year to over five million per year. The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions."

"The figure of 103 million legal immigrants is a reasonable estimate of the actual immigration inflow under the bill and not the maximum number that would be legally permitted to enter. The maximum number that could legally enter would be almost 200 million over twenty years—over 180 million more legal immigrants than current law permits."

Sen. Sessions (R-AL) has produced another estimate similar to the one by the Heritage Foundation. His total? 217 million more people over 20 years. "The staff of GOP Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has completed and released the results of an in-depth impact analysis that shows that if the Senate's Republican immigration bill S. 26 11 should it become law, up to 217.1 million new legal immigrants will be cleared to immigrate into the United States over the next 20 years, a number equal to 66 percent of the total current population of the United States."

Read the full report