President Donald Trump recently renewed his criticism of the left’s immigration agenda, taking aim at mass amnesty. The Democratic Socialists of America are making the point for him, calling to “grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status.”
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a new report last week estimating that the DSA’s immigration policies could cost Americans a whopping $440 billion to $613 billion over 10 years. And that’s not the worst of it.
'The rule of law cannot co-exist with mass amnesty.'
According to the CEA, allowing mass amnesty could create $36 billion to $47 billion in estimated annual costs for just SNAP, Medicaid, and HUD housing vouchers.
The report argues that these costs would come from “turning the existing population of illegal aliens into legal residents eligible for federal social safety net programs.”
While DSA candidates like Melat Kiros believe “millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States right now should have an immediate pathway to citizenship,” American taxpayers should be asking the more important question: If mass amnesty could leave taxpayers with billions in new costs every year, what exactly does it solve?
It certainly does not solve the underlying problem. It changes the legal status of the people already here while leaving the incentives that attract more illegal immigration intact. We have been down this road before. Not to ruin the ending, but we somehow keep finding ourselves right back to where we started.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law created legalization programs for millions of illegal aliens while also establishing employer sanctions intended to discourage the hiring of unauthorized workers. About 2.7 million people ultimately received legal status under the law.
However, the bargain did not work. Due to IRCA’s eligibility cutoff, roughly 2 million were excluded from legalization, while an estimated 500,000 were eligible but never received legal status. According to the Migration Policy Institute, those who remained in unlawful status “became the nucleus of today’s large unauthorized population.”
The enforcement side also fell short. Weaknesses in employment verification and document fraud undermined employer sanctions. The problems IRCA was meant to address ultimately grew. The unauthorized population increased from an estimated 3.5 million in 1990 to 12.2 million by 2007.
Legalization changed the status of millions of people, but it did not prevent the country from having to deal with an even larger unauthorized population later. A growing population of illegal aliens brings larger costs for schools, health care, housing, and other public services.
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The DSA platform does not just call for mass amnesty; members also want an end to ICE detention and deportations.
CEA estimates the “net cost to taxpayers of ending deportations and ICE detentions to be between $79 and $139 billion over 10 years.” The report argues that doing so would eliminate fiscal savings associated with current immigration enforcement.
Former Border Patrol agent and Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Ammon Blair puts it plainly: “The rule of law cannot co-exist with mass amnesty.”
If amnesty paired with enforcement did not keep our country from ending up back here, why should taxpayers expect amnesty with less enforcement to work any better?
Mass amnesty is not an immigration solution. And it cannot prevent the next wave of illegal immigration.
American immigration policy sends a message around the world. If the United States repeatedly demonstrates that entering or remaining in the country illegally may eventually end in legal status, policymakers have to consider the incentive that amnesty creates for the next person deciding whether our immigration laws are worth obeying.
That is the problem with DSA’s socialist immigration promises. The slogans are simple, yet the consequences are anything but. Americans would be left paying billions in new costs while the DSA simultaneously calls for less immigration enforcement.
We cannot mistake an old idea for a new solution. History has shown us that mass amnesty is not the answer. Socialism has never been short on promises, but it is taxpayers who are always expected to foot the bill.