Even though the 2012 presidential election put an end to Mitt Romney’s idea that 47 percent of Americans were moochers “who are dependent upon government,” the Heritage Foundation on Monday doubled down on that thinking, releasing a report that claimed that immigration reform could cost the country $6.3 trillion.

But to believe the Heritage Foundation is to believe—as they say on page 10—that just under 70 percent of all Americans are moochers, taking more from the American economy than they pay in. Only from a starting point that claims 70 percent of Americans “take” from the economy rather than pay into it, can Heritage claim that legalized immigrants would also cost the government trillions of dollars:

Unsurprisingly, a bevy of conservative voices, including Paul Ryan, Doug Holtz-Eakin, Grover Norquist, the Cato Institute, and the Bi-Partisan Policy Institute’s Immigration Task Force (co-chaired by former governor Haley Barbour) have all come out against the study.

The fact of the matter is that Heritage’s study is fatally flawed, failing to account for any changes that might occur after legalization. Here are three examples of how Heritage misses the mark:

1. They do not account for increases in wages after legalization: Previous empirical studies of legalized immigrants (particularly the seminal 1996 Department of Labor study of the nearly 3 million unauthorized immigrants who gained legal status under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986,) have found that legalized workers see a 15.1 percent increase in their wages within 5 years. Recent research has also found that citizenship leads to an addition 10 percent increase in earnings. And yet the Heritage study only includes a 5 percent increase. Higher wages and citizenship means more tax revenue, and a lower fiscal cost because immigrants will pay more taxes on their increased earnings and their increased earnings will lower the need and likelihood of using social programs.

2. They count children only in the “benefits-received” column: Heritage includes even native-born U.S. citizen children of unauthorized immigrants in their calculations, leading to large expenditures on things like public K-12 education. And yet they fail to consider any taxes that these children will pay, simply noting that “the odds that the children of unlawful immigrant, on average, will become strong net taxpayers are minimal.” But all children are “costly” when it comes to getting a public education—the implicit bargain is they pay back into the system once they graduate and become taxpayers. By discounting any of these future payments Heritage artificially inflates their overall costs.

3. They undercount current and future education levels: The Heritage Foundation report is premised on the idea that people with lower levels of education use more in benefits than they pay in taxes. So the percentage of people that Heritage counts as less educated matters. But they do not account for the fact that once legal, people have a strong incentive to get more education and training, now that they can legally work in better jobs. So even if the current undocumented population is skewed more toward people without a high school degree, the incentives to get more education in the future (especially for people who might need this education to qualify for things like the DREAM Act provision) will mean a more-educated future immigrant population. Past experience indicates that these aspiring Americans would likely take the steps needed to invest in their education. For example, a Department of Labor study that followed the cohort of immigrants that gained legal status in 1986 found that just five years later, immigrants at all levels had made investments in their education.

Taking each of these changes into account would significantly raise the amount of tax revenue paid by legalized immigrants, and minimize their costs. By failing to account for them, Heritage gives a skewed picture of the ‘cost’ to Americans from immigration reform, one that defies logic and believability.

And beyond just the direct costs and benefits from immigration, the report casually discards any possibility of indirect benefits from immigrants, as the newly legalized take their higher wages and spend them in the economy, growing demand for goods and services, helping grow businesses, and creating more economic value — all of which helps the economy. In fact providing legalization will boost the U.S. GDP by a cumulative $832 billion over ten years, creating on average 121,000 new jobs in each of those years. These are benefits Heritage does not even begin to consider, instead attempting to resurrect the divisive “moochers and makers” arguments of Romney.

Our guest bloggers are Marshall Fitz, Philip E. Wolgin, and Patrick Oakford, who study immigration at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

On Monday, the Heritage Foundation published a widely panned study arguing that comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, as the population will take advantage of an array of government programs, including, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, public education, and population-based services like police and parks.

But the study, which comes out under the leadership of conservative former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), is a sharp departure from a “Backgrounder” the Foundation published in 2006. Then, Heritage noted that “worker migration is a net plus economically” and warned lawmakers against succumbing to “a lopsided, ideological approach that focuses exclusively on border security while ignore migrant workers (or vice versa) is bound to fail.” Below is a comparison of the two:

(Credit: Boston Magazine)

Though some Republicans have called for halting immigration reform in light of the bombing, the case of these two Kazakh students demonstrates how immigration reform is needed. The Senate’s proposed immigration overhaul would have made it much less likely that Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov would have slipped off federal authorities’ radar, since it creates a tracking system for those who have overstayed their visas.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pointed out a few weeks ago on CNN’s State Of The Union, this will make it easier to catch those who might have dangerous intentions:

GRAHAM: I think now is the time to bring all the 11 million out of the shadows and find out who they are. Most of them are here to work, but we may find some terrorists in our midst who have been hiding in the shadows. When it comes to the entry/exit visa system, the 19 hijackers, all students, overstayed their visas and the system didn’t capture that. We’re going to fix that. In our bill, when you come into the country, it goes into the system. And when your time to leave the country expires and you haven’t left, law enforcement is notified. So we are addressing a broken immigration system.

It’s likely that, no matter the facts of the bill, the news that anyone related to the bombing had overstayed a student visa will cause a dust-up in Congress’s ongoing conversation over comprehensive immigration reform. When Rep. Steve King (R-IA), for example, discovered that bombers themselves were immigrants — older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a permanent resident, while younger brother Dzhokhar was a naturalized citizen — he called for the process to be put on pause.

According to Mother Jones, “Federal authorities allege that these two friends of Tsarnaev’s removed evidence from Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth after the April 15 bombing.” Fox News adds, “Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov are suspected of taking computers and other equipment from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s apartment and trying to dispose of it after the bombings.” The boys’ lawyer maintains that they are innocent.

The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill sets up a pretty long path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — with a somewhat nasty catch. It will take about 13 years for immigrants to become full citizens, but for at least 10 of those years, they won’t be able to access any of the means-tested federal benefits they’re paying into. “Current restrictions preventing non-immigrants from accessing federal public benefits will also apply to lawful probationary immigrants,” the Gang of Eight said in a joint statement, a point Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reiterated in stronger terms independently.

While visiting the annual Miami conference of the Hispanic Leadership Network, a conservative Latino organization, ThinkProgress asked several conference-goers whether they thought it was fair that immigrants on a pathway to citizenship weren’t able to access benefits that they were paying into. Here is what they said:

Credit: Guillaume Paumier

The umbrella group, co-founded by Facebook’s Zuckerberg, NationBuilder’s co-founder Joe Green, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, and others in the tech industry, is called FWD.US. Its initial priority is the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, including enhanced border security, more visas for workers with special skills, and a pathway to citizenship for those living in the U.S. without legal status. Other long-term priorities for the group include education reform and expanded scientific research.

FWD.US is bankrolling two subsidiary organizations to purchase TV ads to advance the overarching agenda — one run by veteran Republican political operatives and one led by Democratic strategists. The GOP-lead group, called Americans For A Conservative Direction, has created an ad in support of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) which praises him for supporting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and expanded drilling elsewhere. The ad, which does not mention immigration policy, also attacks Obamacare, “wasteful stimulus spending,” and “seedy Chicago-style politics.” Politico reports the group plans a seven-figure buy with this and other ads.

Watch the ad:

The other group, called Council for American Job Growth and purportedly intended to appeal to liberals, lauds Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) for “working to open ANWR to drilling.” The ad also does not mention immigration reform but does highlight Begich’s support of a balanced budget amendment.

Watch the spot:

The group’s forceful advocacy for expanded drilling and pipeline construction is surprising given Zuckerberg’s public statements about the purpose of the group. In an introductory column, Zuckerberg said that the group would be dedicated to “building the knowledge economy,” which he contrasts to “the economy of the last century… primarily based on natural resources.” Zuckerberg adds, “there are only so many oil fields, and there is only so much wealth that can be created from them for society.”

Both ads appear to be trying to give political cover to vulnerable centrists, in hopes of ensuring their support for major immigration reform — though Graham’s support seems certain as he is a member of the Gang of Eight pushing the measure. But the proposals already enjoy broad popularity among both Republicans and the public overall.

In the past, Zuckerberg has emphasized the importance of moving from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

When the proposal was first introduced in 2007, then-Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) enlisted 104 co-sponsors — 102 of them Republicans. His 2009 version attracted 95 co-sponsors. After Deal’s election to the Georgia governorship, King took over as chief sponsor in 2011 and got 90 Republican co-sponsors. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a Senate version with four GOP co-sponsors.

But with Republicans pursuing immigration reform in the aftermath of the presidential election, the measure has experienced a significant decline in support. Just two Senators have co-sponsored Vitter’s 2013 Senate bill. And Rep. King’s House version has just 24 co-sponsors to date — all Republicans.

Only a small amount of the drop-off can be attributed to turnover: 16 co-sponsors from the 112th Congress either lost re-election or retired and just one freshman (Michigan’s Kerry Bentivolio) has signed on thus far. And while it is only four months into the 113th Congress, more than two-thirds of the eventual House co-sponsors had already signed on at this point two years ago.

The 51 House incumbents who co-sponsored the bill in the last Congress but have not done so this year include a wide range of Republicans, including Members from swing districts won by President Obama (Reps. Gary Miller of California, Mike Coffman of Colorado, and John Kline of Minnesota) and the nation’s most rock-ribbed Republican districts (Reps. Spencer Bauchus and Robert Aderholt of Alabama and Reps. Ralph Hall and Kevin Brady of Texas). Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) have (so far) dropped from the ranks of the Senate co-sponsors.
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MIAMI, Florida — Though the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill working its way through the Senate would be a godsend for the roughly quarter-million undocumented LGBT immigrants in the United States, the bill still treats LGBT people unequally in one critical respect: couples’ immigration. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) currently prevents same-sex couples from “sponsoring” their partner for residency in the United States in the same way that opposite-sex partners can, but the Gang of Eight declined to change this unjust provision in their reform bill.

At the annual Miami conference of the Hispanic Leadership Network, a group for conservative Latinos, ThinkProgress spoke to conference-goers about their views with respect to treating LGBT couples equally in immigration law. Nearly every person we spoke with supported including in the immigration reform package equal protections for LGBT couples. Here’s why: