Critics: DREAM Act would cost taxpayers $6.2 billion per year
has “a very common formula,” which factors the costs of anything without the benefits.
“If you’re my roommate, there are costs associated with it,” she told FoxNews.com, noting the cost of housing, food and utilities. But she added that the benefits of a roommate paying half the rent, half the utilities and half of the groceries each week should be included in any analysis.
“CIS’s cynical mischaracterization of the DREAM Act is not only inaccurate, but hypocritical as well,” she said in a statement. “CIS frequently laments that so many immigrants to the United States have low levels of education, yet opposes a measure that would allow some of these immigrants to become more educated.”
Her group cited an estimate by the liberal Center for American Progress that it would cost $48.6 billion to deport more than 2 million illegal immigrants who were raised in the U.S.“The U.S. economy doesn’t need more deportations; it needs more college graduates,” she said, citing a Georgetown University report that shows Americans in 2018 will fall short of achieving 22 million new college degrees — the number some say is needed to stay globally competitive — by at least 3 million.
Camarota notes, though, that he never said in his report that the legislation is a bad idea; just that it should include funding. “I said if the act does not want any crowding out effect, then Congress has to provide money to community colleges and state universities,” he said. “The only way there’s no crowding out is if you imagine there are not limited spaces, if you imagine there are not limited funds,” he said.
He also said in-state tuition subsidies are offered to anyone with legal status, a benefit that wouldn’t be eliminated by the DREAM Act because college would otherwise likely be too expensive for most of the beneficiaries.
Fox News notes that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to muster the sixty votes necessary to move to an up-or-down on the measure in the final weeks of the lame -duck session but Republicans are blocking all legislation until Congress votes on extending the Bush tax cuts for all households and funding for the government.
Reid has infuriated Republicans by pushing four different versions of the bill without a hearing on any of them. The latest version lowers from 35 to 30 the age at which an illegal immigrant would be eligible to go through the program.
Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he opposes the bill because it offers “mass amnesty,” allows illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition at public universities and is a “magnet for fraud.”
“Many illegal immigrants will falsely claim that they arrived in the U.S. before age 16,” he said in a written statement. “Once an application is filed, no matter how fraudulent, the federal government is prohibited from deporting the applicant.”
“Meanwhile, they will be given work authorization to compete for jobs with the 14.5 percent of Americans under age 35 who are currently unemployed,” he said.
Representatives for Reid and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the chief sponsor of the DREAM Act, did not return messages seeking comment.
Sefsaf said not passing the DREAM Act is jeopardizing the economic potential of illegal immigrants to buy homes and cars and other things that citizens consume.
Sefsaf, though, could not estimate how much tax or economic revenues would be lost if the legislation falters. “That’s always hard for enumeration,” she said.
In his report, Camarota challenges the argument made by supporters of the DREAM Act that the legislation will significantly increase tax revenue because immigrants with a college education will earn more and pay more in taxes over their lifetime.