In an op-ed published last week in the Daily Caller, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) endorsed The Heritage Foundation report on the true cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Six-point-three trillion dollars is a staggering number, but it was calculated using very reasonable assumptions. No one knows how many illegal immigrants are in this country, but the lowest estimate (barely above the number counted by the census) is 11.5 million — the number Rector used. In other words, $6.3 trillion is the floor, not the ceiling, for amnesty’s cost.

[Heritage expert Robert] Rector’s unassailable method is the only holistic approach available to policymakers, and it would be irresponsible to ignore it in favor of approaches that consider only a few variables.

King cited Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman: “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Do you think American taxpayers can afford to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants?

Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint and Heritage expert Robert Rector shed light on the real cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants in today’s Washington Post:

For centuries immigration has been vital to our nation’s health, and it will be essential to our future success. Yet immigrants should come to our nation lawfully and should not impose additional fiscal costs on our overburdened taxpayers. An efficient and merit-based system would help our economy and lessen the burden on taxpayers, strengthening our nation.

A properly structured lawful immigration system holds the potential to drive positive economic growth and job creation. But amnesty for those here unlawfully is not necessary to capture those benefits . . .

An exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found that after amnesty, current unlawful immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay more than $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes. That leaves a net fiscal deficit (benefits minus taxes) of $6.3 trillion. That deficit would have to be financed by increasing the government debt or raising taxes on U.S. citizens.

Do you think our nation’s taxpayers can afford to cover the $6.3 trillion cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants?

Politico says The Heritage Foundation is among the five players who could stop the push for amnesty for illegal immigrants:

This is the kind of policy fight for which Jim DeMint was hired.

The former South Carolina GOP senator and tea party hero took over last month as president of the 40-year-old conservative think tank, and got straight to work. He has blasted the Gang of Eight’s proposal as “amnesty,” criticized negotiators for drafting the bill in secret and is trying to highlight the bill’s potential costs if millions of undocumented immigrants are made eligible for federal benefits.

If DeMint and Heritage — with its policy analyses and feisty advocacy arm — can help keep the right unified on immigration, it could force Democrats and the White House to accept amendments they don’t like in order to get something through — or simply kill the bill.

Heritage has been here before. The group helped sink previous immigration efforts by focusing on costs. Senior research fellow Robert Rector released a study in 2007 saying that immigration legislation could cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion.

Monday, Heritage said immigration reform could cost $6.3 trillion on new spending on entitlements and social programs.

DeMint appeared on Fox News this morning to explain the costs of granting amnesty:

Do you think lawmakers will balk at the costs of this plan?

The Heritage Foundation released a pivotal report today  which calculates that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants will cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion.

Some highlights from the report:

• If amnesty is enacted, the average adult unlawful immigrant would receive $592,000 more in government benefits over his lifetime than he would pay in taxes.
• The lifetime fiscal deficit of amnesty — benefits minus taxes — would be $6.3 trillion, and that’s a conservative estimate.
• When those granted amnesty retire and collect Social Security, they would draw $3.00 out of the pot for every $1.00 they paid in.
• In 2010, the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. That means that each illegal immigrant household today costs taxpayers $14,387 per year. Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.

In their 93-page report, Heritage welfare expert Robert Rector and domestic policy scholar Jason Richwine break down the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer. Even accounting for the phased approach to implementing government benefits that some amnesty advocates favor, the long-term cost is astronomical. Continue Reading »

The current issue of the policy journal National Affairs features two separate articles written by Heritage Foundation experts.

In the first article, Heritage expert Stuart Butler argues that economic mobility and the American Dream are best promoted not by an expanded welfare state but by empowering the poorest to benefit from the opportunities that our country offers.

The answer to our concerns about inequality and mobility is to foster a broad commitment to strengthening the institutions of civil society, particularly the family. It requires local and national leaders to call for a reaffirmation of the virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity in the communities from which they have been disappearing. The best, and indeed the only fruitful, way for government to participate in this effort is to remove the obstacles and perverse incentives of its own making — and to foster an environment in which our charitable and social institutions are free to form citizens of the high character a great nation demands.

In a second article, Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall and Robert Rector paper explain why the Obama administration directive to remove the work requirement from welfare recipients must be reversed. Continue Reading »

Earlier this week, Heritage Foundation welfare expert Robert Rector hosted a conference call with Heritage members to discuss the future of the welfare system in our nation.

Rector is one of the nation’s leading experts on the impact and scope of welfare reform. He helped draft the 1996 welfare reform act and exposed President Obama’s attempts to undermine its work requirements.

You can listen to the audio of the event in MP3 format by clicking here. 

The latest poverty numbers fail to take into account the government transfer payments made to low-income families, Heritage Foundation welfare expert Robert Rector said Friday on Fox Business.

These payments, which average $9,000 per recipient, aren’t included in the Census Bureau’s poverty calculations, he told host Stuart Varney.

Watch the video:

Do you think the census should count welfare payments and other subsidies when calculating poverty data?

Robert Rector

So-called “fact checkers” in the media have long regurgitated liberal spin on President Obama’s recent gutting of welfare work rules.

But Heritage Foundation experts are pushing back. Yesterday, the Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, was forced to admit flaws in the liberal welfare narrative.

“It is not quite so simple as” President Bill Clinton implied at the Democratic Convention, Kessler admitted, “and neither is it clear yet that the net result is that more people on welfare will end up working.”

Kessler relied heavily on work by Heritage’s Robert Rector for this new analysis: Continue Reading »

The pairing of the dramatic rise in births by single mothers and the collapse of marriage in the United States has led to record levels of children living in one-parent households. And new research shows that more children are living in poverty due to the decrease in marriage rates.

Over a third of all single-parent families with children (37 percent) were poor in 2009, according to Heritage Foundation research, but only 6.8 percent of married couples with children were poor. This means that when a child’s father is married to his mother, the probability of the child living in poverty drops by a staggering 82 percent.

Many of the children living in poverty rely on government welfare programs for financial support and help. “We spend billions of dollars a year to educate low-income children, quite appropriately, and billions more for means-tested welfare aid for single mothers,” says Heritage’s welfare expert, Robert Rector.

Government welfare spending fails to address the root of the issue – the decline of marriage. Lawmakers are unaware of or choose to ignore the link between marriage and poverty prevention.

The effects are not isolated to one income group, geographic area or demographic. Rector reports:

In Florida, for example, white families headed by single parents are five times more likely to be poor than those headed by married couples. In Illinois, the poverty rate for a single mother with only a high school diploma is 39.5 percent, compared with 8 percent for a married couple with the same education.

Politicians are ignoring this critical correlation between marriage and poverty. To learn more about childhood poverty and view the research, visit http:/www.heritage.org/childpoverty.