Congressional Budget Analysts Release Positive Economic Assessment of Immigration Overhaul

Congressional budget analysts on Wednesday released a positive economic assessment of the broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that passed the Senate last week, saying that the new legislation would cut more than $800 billion from the federal deficit over the next two decades and lead to 9.6 million new legal residents in the country.

Though the Congressional Budget Office had offered in June a similar estimate of the immigration bill that was then being debated in the Senate â€" in a report that found the benefits of an increase in legal residents from the immigration overhaul would outweigh the costs â€" the new report provides an analysis of the actual bill recently passed by the Senate.

At the time, the budget office’s report was seen as a boon for immigration advocates and Senate Democrats.

The new report on the final bill, which includes several provisions to further strengthen border security, estimates that the net effect of adding new tax-paying residents in the first decade after the immigration bill is carried out would cut the federal budget deficit by $158 billion. The deficit reduction would be even greater in the following decade, from 2024 to 2033 â€" an estimated $685 billion, or 0.2 percent of the gross domestic product, according to the report.

The deficit reduction figures over the first decade, however, do not account for the net discretionary spending costs of $23 billion to implement the bill, making the net savings slightly lower â€" $135 billion.

Though the legislation would cut the budget deficit by $843 billion over the next 20 years, that number is a fraction of the $47 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office p! rojects will be spent in just half that time.

Perhaps more important, especially to many Republicans, the report also found that the legislation would further reduce future waves of illegal immigration â€" the result, in large part, of a border security amendment added by Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, both Republicans.

Though the original report found that the bill would reduce the number of immigrants in the country illegally by just 25 percent, the analysis of the final bill estimates “that the net inflow would be reduced by between one-third and one-half compared with the projected net inflow under current law.”

The Senate-approved bill, according to a letter from the budget office to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “would significantly increase border secrity relative to the committee-approved version of the bill, and it would strengthen enforcement against those who stay in the country after their authorization has expired.”

Thus, the letter continued, “the Senate-passed act would reduce both illegal entry into the country and the number of people who stay in the country beyond the end of their authorized period.”

In a statement, Senator Charles E. Schumer, the Democrat of New York who helped write the Senate bill, said the budget office “has reaffirmed that immigration reform reduces the debt and grows the economy. It also shows that the Corker-Hoeven amendment further substantially reduces the flow of illegal immigrants, even using a methodology that underestimates how effective immigration reform will be in reducing that flow.”