Written by Richard Butrick   

According to Mr. Reich, Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, the perception that, under the immigration bill before congress, immigrants will hurt the economy for native born Americans is myth driven drivel. His arguments were presented in this journal, "The Truth About Immigration Reform and the Economy", 29 June.

Myth #1 is that the proposed bill (now called The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act ) will strain already overburdened government safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Quite the opposite, according to Reich:

The Congressional Budget Office finds that immigration reform will actually reduce the budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars because while they seek citizenship, undocumented workers will be required to pay into Social Security and Medicare even though they won't be eligible for them.

What Reich fails to mention is that the projected “savings” of $197 billion is with regard to a 10 year period. For the past 4 years the deficit has topped 1 trillion each year. As things are going the bill would save 20 billion a year from the 1 trillion a year. Moreover, what Reich fails to mention is that the CBO also projected wages would be lower by 1% over that period.

CBO projection are subject to so many “other things being equal” caveats and assumptions about GDP growth that their projections invariably are way off.

Economist Kevin Kliesen and economic adviser Daniel Thornton wrote last year in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review that, surprisingly, “in 2000, after more than 40 years of nearly consecutive budget deficits, both the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the CBO projected decade-long budget surpluses.” Moreover, “both agencies projected that publicly held government debt (then totaling $3.5 trillion in 2000) would be completely eliminated by 2010,” the two economists wrote.

Myth#2, according to Reich, is that new immigrants take away jobs from native-born Americans. Again, citing the CBO,
Reich notes immigration reform will increase economic growth by more than 3 percent 10 years from now, 5 percent in 20 years. He fails to point out that the cited report also states that there would be a “slight increase” in unemployment through 2020 because the labor force would grow faster than the economy.

Myth#3, according to Reich is that we don't need new immigrants.
In fact we do need them, according to Reich, to support Social Security. “If present trends continue, there will be only two workers for every retiree by the year 2030.No economy can survive on a ratio of 2 workers per retiree.”

And how many will they need, Mr. Reich? Social Security, as it is now set up, is a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes collapse no matter what. Maybe it’s the Ponzi scheme that needs to be “reformed”?

Aside from basing his myth list on a CBO report, which in general have dismal track records, Reich cherry picks the report to make his case. Add to that the fact that the CBO report does not take into account the children of the to-be-citizen immigrants entering the work force and we have a useless defense of the Orwellian named, The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.