Robert Greenstein and James Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities offer "Overstating Border Reform's Price". It's strikingly similar to the Palm Beach Post editorial "Real immigration reform also comes at good price" of a couple weeks ago. (Usually you'd expect the PBP to follow the lead of such think tanks rather than the other way around, but sometimes the provincials take the lead.) Both of the editorials slice and dice the CBO estimate of the cost of an illegal alien amnesty, and both come to the conclusion that would be translated by Homer Simpson as "we'd be stupid not to do it."
Neither of them are intellectually honest in that they ignore all the costs of yet another amnesty. For instance, an amnest would lead to increased illegal immigration, which would lead to increased political corruption and increased political power inside the U.S. for the government of Mexico. Both of those have costs - financial even - yet they're ignored, as if the only thing that matters is the bottom line derived from first-level impacts.
Note also that the CBPP is a "liberal" group, yet they aren't identified as such in the current WaPo link. I know they're "liberal" because they're identified as such by FactCheck.org, in an earlier WaPo piece, and even by Tom Oliphant on their own page.
Immigration · Sat, 09/16/2006 - 20:47 · · Importance: 1
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Comments
Neither of them are intellectually honest in that they ignore all the costs of yet another amnesty.
It's also 'intellectually dishonest' because it implies that a big reason people oppose amnesty for illegals is due to the high cost, when in reality most of them would oppose it even if it put money in their pockets.
Posted by: eh at Sep 17, 2006 7:46 PM
The only way amnesty would not cost that much in itself would be if they're already grabbing so much alternative welfare, that legalization would open hardly any such programs to them.
Bringing in a bunch of relatives would cost quite a lot, though. Amnesty for illegals would entail directly or indirectly, a massive increase in official aggression on the net taxpayer of our nation, to whom we owe loyalty.
Crying over the sufferings of the mexican criminals cannot obscure this basic fact of the nation; we do owe this loyalty to our fellow citizens.
Posted by: John S Bolton at Sep 17, 2006 12:20 AM