The lifetime costs of Social
Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President
Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to
Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel
obtained in advance by Breitbart News.
Rector, a
senior research fellow at Heritage, is slated to speak on the costs of Obama’s
executive amnesty Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee. He will testify to the high entitlement costs of granting legal
status to millions of illegal immigrants.
Based on
Rector’s calculations, which assume that at least 3.97 illegal immigrants would
apply for and receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of U.S.
citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA), and that the average DAPA
beneficiary would have a 10th grade education, the costs would be immense.
Specifically,
in 2010 dollars, the lifetime costs of Social Security benefits to DAPA
beneficiaries would be about $1.3 trillion.
He further
estimates that DAPA recipients would $7.8 billion each year once they have
access to the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the refundable
Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). Further, the retroactive costs of the EITC
and ACTC— current IRS policy will allow amnesty recipients to claim up to three years of tax
benefits for illegal work — Rector expects to be as high as $23.5 billion.
The Heritage
expert notes that DAPA eligible families are already able to claim certain
welfare benefits — such as food stamps, Medicaid, and Women, Infants and
Children program (WIC) — on behalf of their U.S.-born children.
“The average
DAPA eligible family already receives around $6,600 per year in means-tested
welfare benefits, prior to Obama’s executive action. (The aggregate cost is
around $13.4 billion per year.)” his testimony reads.
And while DAPA
recipients are not eligible for Obamacare, Rector argues that future
legislation could eventually make such DAPA-eligible families able to get
coverage under Obamacare — at a cost of $14 billion annually.
“On average,
the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits currently received, the EITC
and ACTC cash, and potential Obamacare benefits would come to $17,800 per year
per DAPA family,” Rector’s testimony reads. “The aggregate cost would be over
$35 billion per year.”
In terms of
what DAPA eligible individuals would contribute in tax payments once they are
“on the books,” Rector estimates that “Federal Insurance Contribution Act
(FICA) and federal income tax revenues would increase by about $7.2 billion per
year.”
“Nonetheless,
the increase in tax revenue would be equaled or outweighed by the increase in
EITC and ACTC cash payments,” the testimony concludes. “The value of total
means-tested welfare benefits received by DAPA eligible families exceeded the
value of FICA and federal income tax payments made by those families before the
executive action and will continue to do so after the action as well.”
Rector further
assumes that the granting of executive amnesty “will encourage increased
illegal immigration in the future, imposing further costs on taxpayers.”
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