Washington – President Bush’s campaign to solve the problem of illegal immigration is meeting resistance on a new front, as critics fault the Senate reform bill for provisions that a conservative think tank says could allow 103 million immigrants to enter the United States legally in the next 20 years.
Even some Democratic senators, worried about the effect that a generous immigration policy would have on working-class wages, have joined conservative Republicans who say that such massive immigration will transform the character of America.
The 103 million estimate comes from an analysis of the legislation released by the Heritage Foundation on Monday. It appears to have caught Bush administration officials by surprise.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said on the Senate floor that 103 million is “five times the number that can now come into our country. Did anybody even know this was in the legislation?”
White House aides were unprepared when asked about the Heritage report at a briefing on the president’s speech Monday, and said they had to review the numbers.
Vice President Dick Cheney seemed caught off guard Tuesday when, in an appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, he was grilled about the study.
“I haven’t seen their analysis, Rush,” said Cheney. “If that is the case, I would hope that would inform the debate and that Congress will consider those kinds of impacts very carefully before they finally pass something. We’ll certainly weigh in on it.”
The Heritage study was conducted by senior research fellow Robert Rector, who analyzed eight potential paths to citizenship included in the Senate bill for illegal immigrants who are here now, for future guest workers and for its expansion of the existing permanent-residence visa program and then added in the resultant number of immigrant family members who could also file for U.S. citizenship.
“Overall the bill would allow some 103 million persons to legally immigrate over the next 20 years. This is roughly one-third of the current population of the United States,” wrote Rector.
“If (the bill) were enacted and 100 million new immigrants entered the country over the next 20 years, foreign born persons would rise to over one quarter of the U.S. population. There is no precedent for that level of immigration at any time in U.S. history,” said Rector.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said Tuesday the administration was still studying Rector’s analysis, but urged people to be cautious when considering its conclusions because “you have the dangers of trying to do straight-line projections where human beings are cussedly unpredictable.”
If immigration did take place at such a rate, said Snow, Congress could simply adjust the numeric limits in the law.
And White House aide Joel Kaplan noted that, even if Rector’s analysis is accurate, there would be an upside to such a wave of immigration.
“These are people who will be paying taxes and contributing as workers in our society, and we’ll also be mitigating some of the drains on Social Security and Medicare because they will be paying in as workers,” Kaplan said.
But Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in an unsuccessful attempt to strip the bill of its guest worker provision Tuesday, said that a tide of immigration would depress wages for workers already suffering from globalization.
“It is time for the Senate to stand up for American jobs,” said Dorgan. The guest worker provision would “allow low wage workers to come in the front door as we export jobs out the back door.”
