Chart of the Day

– The Congressional Budget Office released its assessment of the Senate Gang of Eight’s immigration reform bill, including this chart showing that the proposal would boost gross domestic product by 3.3% in 2023 and by 5.4% in 2033.

Matthew Yglesias: “In the next ten years you’d have about a $700 billion decrease in deficits. And that’s all without raising taxes or cutting spending on useful programs… This is not, I think, remotely on the political agenda but it occurs to me that in principle this could be the non-tax-hiking, non-welfare-state-gutting sequestration replacement America has been waiting for.”

Arizona Voting Case Raises More Questions

The Supreme Court held in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona that an Arizona law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote violated the National Voter Registration Act, but left the door open for states to raise such a requirement by other means. Lyle Denniston explains.

“For those who would look to Congress to keep open, and expand, the right to vote for the presidency and for members of Congress, Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for a majority (seven to two on several points, six to three on one other very key point) promised that Congress could pass its own laws on the voter registration process, and states would have to yield to those.”

“On the particular point at issue in this case…the Scalia opinion said that a state was free to ask the federal government for permission to add that requirement.   And, Scalia said, if that doesn’t work — either because the federal agency that would deal with such a request is either not functioning or says no — then a state would be free to go to court… The opinion seemed to leave little doubt that, if Arizona or another state went to court to try to establish such a constitutional power, it might well get a very sympathetic hearing.”

Why Obamacare Should Cover Newly Documented Immigrants

Jed Graham explains the perverse incentives created by proposals to exclude undocumented immigrants who receive legal status under immigration reform from receiving health insurance subsidies through President Obama’s health care reform law.

“Both approaches would give employers a big incentive to hire legalized immigrants in order to dodge ObamaCare’s fines for failing to provide affordable, comprehensive health coverage to workers. That’s because such fines may be levied based on the number of full-time employees who actually get subsidized coverage via ObamaCare’s exchanges.”

“For each subsidized worker, many employers will owe a $3,000 nondeductible fine, which equates to $5,000 in wages for a profit-making firm that pays a combined 40% federal and state tax rate.”

Immigration Reform is Far From a Done Deal

Politico looks at efforts by Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) to further tighten border security provisions in the Senate’s immigration bill.

“His amendment would require 100 percent operational control of the Southern borders and that 90 percent of illegal border crossers be apprehended. It would also require 100 percent border surveillance, or situational awareness, of each one-mile segment of the Southern border and installment of a national E-Verify system before registered immigrants can pursue green cards.”

Ezra Klein: “That sure sounds as if no one is ever getting a green card… Republicans believe they can sell these arguments in the next election. If it loses them future election, well, that’s for their future selves to worry about.”

Abstract of the Week

Leah Zallman et al. have a new study in Health Affairs finding that immigrants, especially those not lawfully in the country, overall paid more into Medicare than they took out in each year from 2002 to 2009.

“Many immigrants in the United States are working-age taxpayers; few are elderly beneficiaries of Medicare. This demographic profile suggests that immigrants may be disproportionately subsidizing the Medicare Trust Fund, which supports payments to hospitals and institutions under Medicare Part A. For immigrants and others, we tabulated Trust Fund contributions and withdrawals (that is, Trust Fund expenditures on their behalf) using multiple years of data from the Current Population Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. In 2009 immigrants made 14.7 percent of Trust Fund contributions but accounted for only 7.9 percent of its expenditures—a net surplus of $13.8 billion. In contrast, US-born people generated a $30.9 billion deficit. Immigrants generated surpluses of $11.1–$17.2 billion per year between 2002 and 2009, resulting in a cumulative surplus of $115.2 billion. Most of the surplus from immigrants was contributed by noncitizens and was a result of the high proportion of working-age taxpayers in this group. Policies that restrict immigration may deplete Medicare’s financial resources.”

Why More Low-Skill Immigrant Workers is a Good Thing

While some anti-immigration reform advocates have argued that the Senate proposal will increase the number of low-skill workers in the US and push down the wages of native workers, Tyler Cowen explains how economics points to the opposite conclusion.

“In my view the evidence…suggests that the negative wage pressures on unskilled labor, to the extent they have international origins at all…come more from outsourcing and trade than from immigration… So if you limit low-skilled immigration, outsourcing likely will go up, as it would be harder to find cheap labor in the United States. The United States will lose the complementary jobs as well, such as the truck driver who brings cafeteria snacks to the call center.”

“Conversely, if you increase low-skilled immigration, you will also get more investment in the United States and more complementary jobs as well and possibly some increasing returns from clustering and maybe more net tax revenue too.  On top of that the individuals themselves have greater choice as to where to spend their lives and build their careers.”

The Case Against Immigration Reform

Ross Douthat explains his concerns with the immigration reform package currently under consideration in the Senate, noting that even if “we do nothing but continue on our current course, the proportion of first-generation immigrants in the U.S. population will soon reach its highest point in nearly a century and then keep going up from there.”

“What immigration reform’s conservative skeptics would prefer, rather than a society that welcomes as many immigrants as want to come and also expands the welfare state apace, is a society that maintains America’s historical balance between (at least relatively) limited government and (at least relatively) egalitarian arrangements of wealth, property and opportunity.”

“What’s up for debate right now is not whether the United States should welcome millions of immigrants and their children; it’s just whether, given the state of the American experiment at the moment, it makes sense to welcome and try to assimilate low-skilled immigrants at an even faster rate.”

How One Amendment Says Immigration Reform Will Pass

Matthew Yglesias sees rays of hope for immigration reform after a successful markup process where “senators disagreed about the merits of an issue, and  they struck a compromise whose goal was to advance their substantive objectives rather than to provide rationalizations for opposing a bill.”

“The basic issue is that the Gang of 8 immigration framework both expanded the H1-B skilled guest worker program and added some new hoops that companies have to jump through if they want to hire H1-B workers. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah…had a couple of amendments that would basically pair those hoops back. Dick Durbin…did not like those amendments.”

“If this were the health care bill, the way it would have played out would have been that Hatch would be unable to get 100 percent of what he wanted and then that would have become a key talking point of his over why he can’t support the law. What happened instead is that Hatch and Durbin struck a compromise that advances the key interests of tech companies while retaining some of the protections that H1-B skeptics wanted. Hatch then voted for the bill, not promising to support final passage but saying that he wants the legislative process to move forward.”

Immigration Reform Passes Senate Committee

“The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws on a bipartisan vote,” the New York Times reports, “sending the most significant immigration policy changes in decades to the full Senate, where the debate is expected to begin next month.”

“The most emotional part of the committee process, which stretched over five days and 301 amendments, came late Tuesday, when Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the committee, said that he would not offer an amendment allowing United States citizens to apply for permanent resident status, known as a green card, on behalf of their same-sex partners.”

The Associated Press provides the key details of the amended legislation as it heads to the Senate.

How is Immigration Reform Faring in Committee?

The Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration reform proposal is currently undergoing the markup process in the Judiciary Committee, involving the consideration of what could amount to hundreds of amendments. Dylan Matthews has a breakdown of the 48 amendments that have already been adopted in three days of markup.

Here are some of the most interesting changes so far:

“Securing the whole border (voice vote) Another Grassley amendment strikes all references to ‘high risk’ sections of the border. The bill as written would allow the path-to-citizenship section of the bill take effect when 90 percent of crossers at the high-risk sections of the Mexican border are being captured. This amendment changes that to requiring that 90 percent of crossers on all of the Mexican border be captured before the path-to-citizenship section takes effect.”

“Family unity in detention (10-8) This Hirono amendment would require border agents to ask if apprehended individuals are traveling with spouses or children, or whether or not they are parents or spouses. The intent is to try to ensure that families are not separated during the interrogation process.”

“Protection for E-Verify false positives (voice vote) This Franken amendment calls for annual audits to determine the error rate for E-Verify, the legal status verification system that the immigration bill makes mandatory, and if the rate of false positives (that is, legal residents who are marked as illegal) is above a certain rate, then the maximum fine for first-time offender companies is reduced to account for the possibility of system error.”

Cities Take Divergent Approaches to Immigrants

The Wall Street Journal looks at efforts by cities in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions to attract immigrants in an attempt to “spur business creation and revive neighborhoods.”

“Steps vary from proclamations welcoming immigrants, to adding staff focused on attracting newcomers and translating government websites, to efforts to connect international students with local companies.”

“Such efforts contrast with developments in Arizona, Alabama and some other states, where concerns that illegal immigrants could take jobs from native-born workers and drive up government costs have helped fuel a push for tougher immigration enforcement.”

How Effective is Border Enforcement? We Don’t Know

Brad Plumer highlights a new study from the Council on Foreign Relations studying efforts to secure the border and prevent unlawful immigration and calling on “Congress and the federal government…to develop much, much better metrics on how well its enforcement policies are working.”

“Government agencies have plenty of stats like how many miles of fence they’re building or how many guards they’ve hired. But they don’t report results and actual outcomes, such as the apprehension rate at the border. As a result, little is known about the effectiveness of various enforcement measures.”

Immigration Reform Could Make a Mess of Obamacare

Investor’s Business Daily notes that “interaction of the Gang of Eight’s immigration reform with ObamaCare would give some employers a $3,000 incentive (after taxes) to hire a newly legalized immigrant over an American citizen.”

“To review, under ObamaCare, employers who offer insurance will face a fine of up to $3,000 per worker who receives subsidies to buy insurance through the exchanges. Those subsidies are available to legal residents and citizens whose employers don’t offer coverage that’s ‘affordable’… Since such subsidies wouldn’t be available to legalized immigrants under the Senate Gang of Eight reform bill for at least a decade, employers who offer ‘unaffordable’ insurance could hire those granted legal status on a full-time basis without worrying about a potential $3,000 nondeductible fine.”

Immigration Reform Won’t Cost $6 Trillion

A new report from the Heritage Foundation estimates that the cost of a “path to citizenship” — sometimes referred to as amnesty — for the millions of unlawful immigrants in the US would create a $6.3 trillion deficit over the course of their lifetimes. Tim Kane says he is “disappointed in its poor quality.”

“The most glaring error is the weak alternatives comparison. This paper asserts a cost of ‘amnesty’ as if migrants are only costly if a new piece of legislation passes. What is the cost of the status quo?… it really is incumbent on the authors to provide this themselves, and not offering such a number raises questions. The details are no better: no Obamacare costs for the status quo? A tripling of direct welfare costs triple after legislation passes yet tax revenues hardly budge?”

“The authors estimate fiscal benefits only (and weakly), but ignore economic benefits entirely. This fails the longtime Heritage claim to support dynamic analysis in tax and security policy… I can only hope CBO does an analysis of immigration reform that will show how skewed the Heritage immigration work has become.”

Immigration Reform Begins Journey Through the Senate

Congress returns from its recess this week and immigration reform tops the agenda, as the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin considering what could be hundreds of amendments in the “mark up” the “Gang of Eight” proposal, The Hill reports.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin marking up the legislation on Thursday, and at least three other Senate panels have scheduled hearings on the bill… An agreement on the scope of a guest-worker program has been holding up the House talks.”

David Marron has an interesting piece on how the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office plan to deal with the difficulty of “scoring” this type of legislation.

“If Congress allows more people into the United States, our population, labor force, and economy will all get bigger. But CBO and JCT usually hold employment, gross domestic product (GDP), and other macroeconomic variables constant when making their budget estimates. In Beltway jargon, CBO and JCT don’t do macro-dynamic scoring.”

“That approach makes no sense, however, for immigration reforms that would directly increase the population and labor force…Because increased immigration has such a direct economic effect, the only logical thing to do is explicitly score the budget impacts of increased population and employment. And that’s exactly what CBO and JCT intend to do.”

The Real Immigration Debate is Just Getting Started

The immigration reform push began in earnest almost as soon as President Obama won reelection, but the congressional debate is only now beginning to heat up.

Politico reports that the “Senate Judiciary Committee will begin marking up the so-called Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform legislation on May 9… The chairman predicted that dozens of amendments could be filed, so several subsequent markup dates have been scheduled: May 14, May 16, May 20, and any time after that may be needed to finish the legislation.”

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives will begin to circulate “small immigration bills…as discussion pieces for House members,” coordinated by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), according to the National Journal, beginning to piece together legislation that will likely be much more conservative than the Senate’s product.

Amnesty Isn’t the Problem

Ramesh Ponnuru says that while a “pathway to citizenship” might garner the most attention in the debate over immigration reform, what “ought to be drawing more opposition is the proposal to bring hundreds of thousands of ‘temporary guest workers’ to the U.S.”

“One of the worst things about illegal immigration is that it creates a class of people who contribute their labor to this country but aren’t full participants in it and lack the rights and responsibilities of everyone else. A guest-worker program doesn’t solve this problem. It formalizes it.”

“Most people who work in the U.S. can quit their jobs without worrying that they’ll be ejected from the country after 60 days of unemployment. Temporary workers would have no such security… Some foreigners may choose this fate as better than their alternatives. It seems unfair, though, to ask Americans to compete with workers who will be more willing to put up with bad working conditions because of this artificially precarious situation.”

The Immigration Reform Bill is Too Complicated

While the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” produced an immigration reform bill would be “a big step in the direction of reforming our immigration policy,” Richard Posner argues that the legislation “is an unreadable 880 pages in length” and would create “a bureaucratic nightmare.”

“One respect in which the bill would expand bureaucracy is its ambitious, expensive effort to make our long border with Mexico impermeable to illegal immigration. The effort probably is Quixotic, like all previous efforts to seal the border, and so will fail.”

“The proposed law contains…a confusing medley of provisions designed to ease barriers to the immigration of highly educated foreigners—multiple paths, in short, to citizenship. The actual easing of barriers by virtue of these provisions is likely to be offset by the amount of red tape required to wade though in order to take advantage of the provisions; just choosing which provision to invoke in aid of being permitted to immigrate is likely to baffle many potential immigrants.”

Obama Can Look for Crumbs or Go Big

John Cassidy lays out President Obama’s two possible strategies as he continues to pursue his second-term legislative agenda, which includes a stalled gun control bill, immigration reform, climate change, and the budget.

“The first strategy would involve continuing to search for legislative deals with the Republicans on issues like the budget, and, where they aren’t possible, using executive orders to advance a progressive agenda in modest ways… The new standards for fuel economy that Obama introduced in his first term show that such changes can have a significant impact. But incrementalism would be the order of the day.”

“The second strategy would be more ambitious, and riskier. It would involve finally abandoning efforts at bipartisanship, declaring war on the Republican obstructionists, and going all out to overturn their majority in the House in November, 2014… The anger Obama exhibited following the Senate votes on gun control showed another side of his personality—a tougher, more combative side, a part of him willing to label his opponents scoundrels and liars.”

Immigration Reform Follows Usual Washington Timeline

The “Gang of Eight” senators working on an immigration reform deal released their plan this week after months of negotiations with each other and various interest groups. Politico looks at how the bill will traverse the normal Washington process for producing and debating legislation, a rare sight in recent years.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on the legislation on Friday and another one on Monday, and the bill won’t go through the markup process until May…giving the public more time to read the more than 800-page piece of legislation.”

“The gang plans to stick together as they move through the amendment process. Four of its eight members are on the Judiciary Committee, allowing them to work as a group to try to block hostile amendments.”

Don’t Let Perfection Kill Another Immigration Bill

“In 2007, a plan championed by both the Republican president, George W. Bush, and the Democratic senator Ted Kennedy was sunk, in part, by Democrats who opposed creating a new visa for temporary guest-workers who would not have a shot at citizenship,” writes Eduardo Porter. “The demand for perfection became the enemy of the good… Could the same thing happen again? Perhaps.”

“Labor unions have come a long way in the last six years. Still, many remain skeptical about tens of thousands of cheap new guest laborers competing for jobs. Some immigrant advocacy groups don’t much like a provision to cull family-related visas. Conservatives remain very uncomfortable with granting residence and citizenship to ‘lawbreakers’ who might consume lots of public services and vote for Democrats once they are allowed to become citizens years down the road.”

“Yet as Americans consider the broad attempt at changing the nation’s immigration laws, it is important to weigh any discomfort at specific provisions against the alternative of no reform at all.”

Senate Immigration Bill Checks All the Boxes

Dylan Matthews summarizes the key points in the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform proposal, touching on many of the major issues that have vexed reform advocates since the failed legislative effort in 2007.

“If you’re an undocumented immigrant who arrived in the United States before Dec. 31, 2011, haven’t committed a felony (or three misdemeanors), hold a job, and pay a $500 fine and back taxes, then you will immediately gain the status of ‘registered provisional,’ allowing an individual to legally stay in the United States without risk of deportation… the recognition-to-citizenship process takes a total of 13 years and requires $2,000 in fines from each adult affected… DREAMers — or those who entered illegally before age 16, graduated from high school, and have been in the United States for at least five years — would have a quicker path.”

“If, by the fifth year the bill is in effect, 90 percent of crossers aren’t being apprehended and 100 percent of the border isn’t being surveilled, the bill would establish a commission of four border-state governors and add another $2 billion in security funding… The bill would mandate employers use an improved version of E-Verify, an electronic system for determining the legal status of current and prospective employees, within five years.”

“The number of H1-B visas, which are designed for high-skilled workers, would increase from 65,000 to at least 110,000, and up to 180,000 depending on employer demand… A new ‘W-visa’ program for low-skilled guest workers, capped at 20,000, would start in 2015. The cap would rise to 75,000 by 2019… the bill also caps the number of agricultural visas to 337,000 over three years. A new agricultural guest worker program would be launched as well… The bill allows an unlimited number of visas to go to parents, children and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent legal residents.”

Talking Points Memo has the more in-depth bill summary released by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight.”

Has Obama Become Irrelevant?

Ramesh Ponnuru notes that while President Obama may have won reelection in 2012, he has been mostly sidelined in the major policy debates of his second term.

“His campaign for new gun regulations is fizzling out — and not, primarily, because of opposition from the Republican House or filibuster threats from Republican senators… Liberals can celebrate the rapidly increasing support for same-sex marriage. Most of the action on that issue, though, is taking place in state legislatures, referendums and the courts… The main policy achievement that liberals have made since the election was the tax increase at the start of the year… But the most powerful force in that debate was inertia, not Obama.”

“On immigration, the budget and other issues, the president will, of course, have influence: Senate Democrats won’t want to break with him in public. There is, however, essentially no chance that he will veto anything that the Democratic Senate passes, and thus Republicans can safely pay him little attention on many issues.”

Bipartisan Senate Group Releases Immigration Plan

The Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has released its comprehensive immigration reform package, including a path to citizenship, enhanced border security measures, and various visa reforms, according to the Washington Post, which has created an infographic laying out the various provisions of the bill.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings Friday and Monday on the bill, which is hundreds of pages long. Opponents of a deal have denounced portions of the plan, and some senators are expected to offer a flurry of amendments… Similar tactics helped doom the 2007 effort.”

“The Senate bill would allow most undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country before Dec. 31, 2011, to immediately gain ‘registered provisional’ status after paying a $500 fine and back taxes, provided they have not committed a felony or three misdemeanors. They could then apply for permanent resident status in 10 years after paying additional fees. Three years later, they could apply for citizenship.”

New York Times: “In addition, agricultural workers and children brought to the country illegally by their parents — know as ‘Dreamers’ — would receive an expedited path to legal status. (Both groups would be able to receive green cards in five years. The Dreamers would be eligible for citizenship immediately after they got their green cards.)”

Senate Links Secure Borders and Pathway to Citizenship

The Wall Street Journal previews how the bipartisan group of senators working on immigration reform plans to link border security and a pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrants in the country illegally.

“In a major change for businesses, all employers would be required after a five-year phase-in period to use the government’s E-Verify system, which screens for illegal workers. E-Verify now is largely voluntary… Along the U.S.-Mexican border, 100% of the border would have to be under surveillance, and law enforcement would have to catch 90% of those who cross the border illegally at ‘high risk’ sections.”

“Once all of those measures are met, immigrants could begin qualifying for green cards. In the meantime, the legislation would grant probationary status to illegal immigrants who passed a criminal-background check, paid a fine and met other conditions.”