In 2010, Rupert Murdoch testified for amnesty using two studies from the progressive Center for American Progress ("CAP").

Now, Sarah Jane Glynn of CAP hypes amnesty using studies from the George W Bush-era Whitehouse, an odious libertarian from the Cato Institute (which is linked to the Koch family), and the Federal Reserve.

The events are unrelated, but they illustrate yet again that when it comes to immigration there isn't much difference between the left and right elites (and their helpers like Glynn). Both also illustrate that you can't trust CAP to get things right.

Glynn's "Top 5 Economic Benefits from the President's Immigration Announcement / Little to Fear, Much to Look Forward to" [1] tries to put a smiley face on Obama's DREAM Act amnesty. The first supposed benefit is:

...A study conducted by the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush found that in 2007 immigrants contributed $37 billion per year to the economy. This is because immigrant workers complement native-born workers (rather than compete with them) and increase productivity overall...

That study [2] lumps all possible foreign-born persons together - legal immigrants, illegal aliens, long-term temporary workers. There's a different economic impact between, say, Eduardo Saverin and a newly-arrived unskilled illegal alien from Mexico who speaks neither English nor Spanish. Yet, that - and most other immigration studies - lumps them all together. And, like almost all similar studies, it fails to fully account for all the costs of those various types of immigrations: see immigration economics. See also this discussion of the "veranda pitch".

Note also that in 2004, Bush proposed a plan that would have opened the U.S. labor market to the world, driving down wages for large numbers of middle-class occuptions. CAP might quibble with a point here or there, but they and Bush are on the same basic side of immigration.

Glynn's second point:

A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study found that areas with higher levels of immigration had higher wages for native-born workers. This is because when undocumented immigrants are granted work authorization, it raises the “wage floor” for all workers by preventing employers from deleveraging native workers’ wages with undocumented and therefore exploitable wages...

See Federal Reserve and immigration banks: those entities have a financial stake in massive immigration of any kind.

The study [3] she links to is by Giovanni Peri, someone who seemingly wants to repeal the law of supply and demand. See also this, this, and this.

And, see immigration wage floor for what will actually happen: those newly-legalized former illegal aliens will now be able to compete with Americans for higher-skilled jobs (and most of those negatively affected will be Democrats). Former illegal aliens moving up the ladder will lead to corrupt businesses enablilng a new group of low-skilled illegal aliens to come here to take the places of those who moved up.

In the same section, Glynn writes:

One of the surest ways to create more jobs is to create more demand for services. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman put it, "Your spending is my income, and my spending is your income." The more money average consumers have in their pockets (including DREAMers), the more jobs are created and the better off we all are.

The first link in that paragraph is to [4] and it doesn't mention immigration; Krugman has actually gone against the Democratic grain on that topic. The second link is to [5] by Robert Reich. It too doesn't mention immigration; Reich is more of a Democratic partisan on that topic than Krugman, but then again Reich has problems with facts (see his name's link).

In another section, Glynn relies on the Cato Institute article "Immigration Doesn't Hurt Native-Born Workers" [6] by Dan Griswold. Calling Griswold a very loose borders, anti-American worker, cheap labor proponent is much too kind. He was the inspiration for Bush's 2004 program mentioned above.

Discussing Glynn's other supposed benefits is left as an exercise. But, if anyone thinks any of her supposed benefits have any validity, leave a comment below and I'll discuss those too.

Contact @AmProg and @CAPimmigration with your thoughts.

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[1] americanprogress . org/issues/2012/07/deferred_action_top_5.html

[2] georgewbush-whitehouse.archives . gov/cea/cea_immigration_062007.html

The first footnote of that says:

This document will use "immigrant" and "foreign born" interchangeably. The terms encompass both legal and illegal migrants. Because it is difficult to determine the legal status of migrants in standard data sets, the economics literature generally assesses all foreign-born workers together.

[3] frbsf . org/publications/economics/letter/2010/el2010-26.html

[4] nytimes . com/2012/06/01/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-agenda.html

[5] csmonitor . com/Business/Robert-Reich/2011/0611/
Put-more-money-in-consumers-pockets-to-boost-recovery

[6] cato . org/publications/commentary/
immigration-doesnt-hurt-nativeborn-workers