New Bogus Study from UCLA Claims Amnesty Will Make Us Prosperous

Last Ditch Pitch Reveals Desperation of Amnesty Proponents

By Bob Dane, FAIR Communications Director

This week, the Center for American Progress released a "study" done by Dr. Paul Hinojosa-Ojeda, a radical open-borders activist-professor at UCLA. In it, amnesty is heralded as an economic nirvana because the legalization of 13 million illegal aliens will cause the gross domestic product (GDP) to rise $1.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

This report is a mathematical fantasy that defies common sense and years of research. It's being used by the far left political elite as a last ditch pitch to sell their amnesty agenda, but we're not buying it. Amnesty proponents understand they have a limited window until midterm elections to accomplish their agenda and they can clearly see that public support for amnesty has no pulse given 10% unemployment and massive government spending. In a desperate final propaganda push they're peddling amnesty as the new Economic Stimulus Package. It's not. It's the next massive bailout - this time to benefit 13 million illegal aliens, and a wholesale sell out of American workers. The fact that this Administration is entertaining the notion of amnesty in this economy should be an affront to every American. Just because 13 million illegal aliens could be administratively converted from illegal to legal status doesn't change the fact that most are poorly skilled, undereducated and heavily government dependent. That dependency will continue if they're made legal - in fact it gets worse because they'd get more in tax credits than they put in. Moreover, since they would have legal status, they'd be eligible for even more government benefits than they already have at the federal, state and local levels. Taxpayers will suffer. Flooding the market with more cheap labor and adding millions of government-dependent people is no way to fix our economy.

The report focuses almost exclusively on the broad GDP - the total sum of all goods and services produced - not on the plight of real people with real needs. The study claims that there would be a $792 billion rise in GDP over ten years, yet the Heritage Foundation finds that Obama's planned amnesty will give illegal immigrants not merely health care benefits, but full access to the massive U.S. welfare system comprising over 70 separate aid programs at a cost of around $700 billion per year.

Yes, our GDP could rise if we add 13 million people to the economy but that doesn't mean the per-person share of the GDP will rise. The abstract economic metric really means nothing for John Q. Public. It doesn't get him a job (in fact it reduces his chances because amnesty would add 13 million more legal workers into the economy all competing legally for the scare jobs he needs), it doesn't increase his wages and it certainly won't reduce his taxes. The winners are companies who get to keep their cheap labor supply, immigrants themselves, and the political parties who will add millions of new citizens, most of whom will vote for the party that gives them the biggest handout.

The report claims that amnesty will cause wages to rise. For whom - the illegal workers who get rewarded with citizenship and get a few more dollars per hour? Despite their claim that wages rose after the 1986 amnesty, the fact is that when properly adjusted for inflation, real wages for low-wage American workers have not increased since 1986, and since 1965 have actually decreased. Amnesty will not magically grant illegal aliens an education, better job skills, or higher earning potential. It only grants them access to taxpayer funded programs. Their wages levels may rise marginally overall, but not enough to make illegal aliens net contributors as taxpayers.

What has increased since 1986 is the amount of people coming to US expecting yet another round - their personal round - of amnesty. Granting amnesty just creates the incentive to come here illegally and perpetuates the cheap illegal labor addiction of business and keeps wages low.

A century ago, poorly-educated immigrants were needed for low value-added, mass production work. Their care generally fell on family members or private charities. Today their care falls on the public by way of massive entitlement programs. Unless immigrants can generate the "value added" to cover their costs associated with being here, their recruitment generates reduced wage costs for employers but far higher taxes for the rest of us. What made sense at one time no longer makes sense. What once was can no longer be.

Finally, converting 13 million illegal aliens into instant citizens doesn't stop the cost of illegal immigration because it just encourages more. We'll have the staggering cost of adding millions of new low-income government dependent citizens, and we'll continue to incur the cost of the next round of illegal aliens.

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