Analysis: CBO Scoring of Immigration Bill A Game Changer

The new CBO report is a bit of a political game changer for the immigration debate.   While it has been long argued that the Senate Immigration Bill would do many things – improve border security and interior enforcement, resolve the issue of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working here in the US, improve the legal immigration system, smartly invest in expanding our trade with Mexico – we now know that it will also help improve the US economy, create jobs and significantly lower the budget deficit. 

The bar for the opposition to the Senate immigration bill just got higher.  Already specious arguments that already effective and ambitious Senate border security goals don’t go far enough are no longer sufficient for opposing this bill.   To oppose the Senate bill means one is now for increasing the deficit, slowing growth and reducing the number of jobs created in the US in coming years. 

Finally, it needs to be understood that the new attack by House Republicans on what is known as “prosecutorial discretion,” a provision they have attacked in both the recent King Amendment and in the just passed SAFE Act, would result in the elimination of the current government policy of prioritizing criminal migrants for deportation.   Thus, it can now be said of those House supporters of the SAFE act today that they are voting to eliminate the prioritizing of criminals from removal of the country, and for increasing the deficit and reducing US economic growth.

How exactly the House GOP found itself in these tortured set of policy positions is one of the great mysteries of the current immigration debate.