Magical Thinking About Amnesty

With amnesty, we will wave the magic wand, and suddenly new low-wage workers will appear, along with new mouths for Nanny State to feed. That's sure to boost incomes and lower the deficit.

Surely, the party of fiscal responsibility wouldn't support such a self-destructive policy, would they? Oddly, some creative Republicans are arguing that "[l]egalizing undocumented immigrants will make them pay more taxes, earn higher wages and bring an underground demographic of workers into the official American economy."

It is quite common for conservatives, and liberals who want to sound responsible, to claim that immigration is needed for economic regeneration. This argument is an extreme absurdity. If immigrants boosted the tax base, then California would be the most successful state in the nation. California would be looking at budget surpluses that would be the envy of the nation.

Instead, California is living proof of the harmful economic impact caused by mass immigration. Over the last two decades, California grew by 10 million new people, but gained only 150,000 new taxpayers. As a study by a team of economic and public policy professors found, "From the mid-1980s to 2005, California's population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by seven million; tax filers paying incometaxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000." This is the make-up of a demographic and economic catastrophe, and it is the open borders Republican model for the rest of the nation.

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