The White House's misleading "Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System"

The Obama administration released a report entitled "The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System" [1] and this post will briefly describe how it misleads. If you trust the Obama administration to tell you the truth, please read the following. If you still believe them when you get to the end, then leave a comment and I'll add even more.

Their blog post summarizing the report (the "Summary") highlights the recent CBO report, but only the "good" parts [2]. Only in the White House report itself (the "Report") do you find a mention of the bad parts, and the report soft soaps those [3]. They try to put a smiley face on the CBO prediction that immigration "reform" will lead to a lost decade for millions of American workers.

From the Summary:

The Partnership for a New American Economy found that immigrants started 28 percent of all new U.S. businesses, despite accounting for only 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2011. Notably, more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. These American companies represent 7 of the 10 most valuable brands globally, collectively employ more than 10 million people and generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion.

How the Partnership for a New American Economy Fortune 500 study misleads is discussed at the link. Among other things, the PNAE study considered DuPont an "immigrant", despite arriving here in 1799. Their study also counted Alexander Graham Bell twice. PNAE is run by Michael Bloomberg and their leaders are split between the very wealthy (who'd profit from more immigrant labor) and big city mayors (who'd gain racial power from more immigrants).

From the Summary:

CBO estimates that real wages will be 0.5 percent higher in 2033 - the equivalent to an additional $250 of income for the median American household - as a result of enacting the Senate bill.

That's hardly something to highlight. According to the Whitehouse, the median household would only gain $20 extra a month 20 years from now for passing something that has huge non-fiscal downsides. Current Americans will lose political power due to immigration "reform" and will see crime, traffic, public bilingualism, and on and on rise. Many Americans would pay 0.5% of their income to avoid all the negative consequences of "reform".

From the Summary:

The Senate bill raises the "wage floor" for all workers - particularly in industries where large numbers of easily exploited, low-wage, unauthorized immigrants currently work.

For how that misleads, see immigration wage floor. At least give them points to dredging up such a rare talking point.

Studies of the 1986 immigration reform law found that legalizing immigrants saw wage increases of about 10 percent, due in part to increases in workers’ productivity that benefited the economy as a whole.

The 1986 amnesty isn't something to crow about, since it set the stage for the current situation. If that amnesty had been avoided or at least its enforcement provisions had actually been enforced, then we'd have millions fewer illegal aliens inside the U.S. than we do.

From the Summary:

Comprehensive immigration reform will contribute to our housing market recovery

Paging Steve Sailer! George W Bush set the stage for the mortgage mess, and apparently Obama wants to follow him in that way too.

From the Report:

According to a USDA simulation of a similar policy, an expanded agriculture temporary-worker program49 would increase long-run agricultural output by between 0.2 percent and 2.0 percent, depending on the crop, and would increase agricultural exports by between 0.2 percent and 3.2 percent.

What that fails to note is that the same USDA study shows that having many fewer illegal aliens wouldn't devastate agriculture. Both refer to the "Immigration Policy and Its Possible Effects on U.S. Agriculture" study, it's just that the White House chooses to highlight the scenario good for their political aims and ignores the scenario good for the U.S. Having fewer illegal aliens available to growers would have very healthy impacts: it would encourage automation and fight attempts to throw cheap foreign serf labor at the problem. And, it would fight attempts by politically-connected growers to encourage politicians to look the other way on massive illegal activity. See immigration agriculture, Western Growers, Tom Nassif, Jon Vessey, and Department of Agriculture for much more on these issues.

The Report also offers a false choice: it claims that we have to choose between comprehensive immigration reform and doing nothing. There are many other options, but the most pro-American one is attrition. That would, among many other things, free up jobs for Americans, raise wages for many Americans, and reduce some industries' reliance on serf labor. It would also reduce the political power that foreign governments such as the Mexican government have in the U.S. (see the link for examples). It would also reduce political corruption: the reason there's so much illegal immigration is because politicians look the other way for personal gain. It would also serve to keep our corrupt, post-American elites in check: massive immigration is one of the issues the elites believe in the most.

If the above hasn't convinced you that the Obama administration is trying to fool you into supporting "reform", leave a specific comment below and I'll add even more.

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[1] whitehouse . gov/blog/2013/07/10/
economic-benefits-fixing-our-broken-immigration-system
The authors of that blog post are: Cecilia Munoz, Gene Sperling, Alan Krueger, Sylvia Mathews Burwell. The first two links have background information on them.

[2] From the Summary:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that enacting the Senate immigration reform bill will increase real GDP relative to current law projections by 3.3 percent in 2023 and 5.4 percent in 2033 – an increase of roughly $700 billion in 2023 and $1.4 trillion in 2033 in today’s dollars.
The bipartisan Senate bill will increase the labor force by 3.5 percent in 2023 and 5 percent in 2033, according to CBO, which will boost capital investment and lead to increased productivity and higher overall average wages.

[3] From the Report:

In its economic analysis of the bipartisan Senate bill, CBO found that in the short-run, wages for some groups of workers will increase modestly while wages for other groups could fall modestly under the Senate bill, and predicted a small and temporary negative adjustment in the overall average wage. But as CBO explains, its analysis does not separately consider the effects on U.S. and foreign-born workers – meaning that this “do[es] not necessarily imply that current U.S. residents would be worse off.” In fact, as CBO notes, the temporary reduction in average wages is at least partly attributable to an increase in lower-wage immigrants: because new immigrants would, on average, earn lower wages than the current workforce, their entry into the labor force would reduce the overall average wage to a small degree. Additionally, as noted above, CBO finds that over the long run – once productivity gains and higher capital levels materialize – all skill groups would see higher wages as a result of enacting the Senate bill, with real wages rising by the equivalent of $250 annually for the median household, in today’s dollars.