Social security would be helped by immigration reform

FLAG2The Senate bill to overhaul the immigration laws in the United States would also help to lessen the financial strain in regards to the Social Security retirement program, according to government analysts in a report, released yesterday, that marks the latest exchange in the arguments over the impact of the legislation.

Social Security Administration experts sent a letter to Senator Marco Rubio, one of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” who came up with the new bill, claiming that the bill’s effects on the finances of Social Security will be a positive one.  The analysis claims that the immigration bill would create around 3.22 million jobs over the course of the next ten years, boosting the country’s gross domestic product by as much as 1.63 percentage points over that decade.

The letter comes just a few days after the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, released a hotly-debated report that claimed that if the bill offered a path to US citizenship for illegal immigrants it would end up costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars.

The sweeping immigration reform bill would revamp programs for US visas to enable more high- and low-skilled workers to enter the country, increase border security funding, and offer a 13-year path to US citizenship for a large majority of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already residing in the United States.  Liberals and even some conservatives have criticized the Heritage Foundation report, alleging that it ignores the increase of economic growth that would result from immigration reform.