Speech #1050101747

Mr. President. I rise today to discuss the National Academy of Sciences study on immigration that has received so much attention in the past year. This is a study the Senate Immigration Subcommittee held a hearing on this September featuring two of the principal authors of the report. In releasing the study. the Academy stated quite clearly that "Immigration benefits the U.S. economy overall and has little negative effect on the income and job opportunities of most nativeborn Americans." Moreover. the recent hearing showed that the studys findings were actually more positive than the initial press reports indicated. Ronald Lee. a professor of demography and economics at the University of California at Berkeley who performed the key fiscal analysis for the Academy study. testified at the hearing that "[The NAS] Panel asked how the arrival of an additional immigrant today would affect U.S. taxpayers. According to the report. over the long run an additional immigrant and all descendants would actually save the taxpayers $80.000." Lee notes that immigrant taxes "help pay for government activities such as defense for which they impose no additional costs." Immigrants also "contribute to servicing the national debt" and are big net contributors to Social Security. Critics of immigration cite only the studys figures on the annual costs immigrant households are said to impose on natives. However. Lee testified that "These numbers do not best represent the Panels findings. and should not be used for assessing the consequences of immigration policies." This is a pretty clear statement that citing the household cost figures to urge cuts in legal immigration Is an improper use of the studys data. The problem. Lee found. was that calculating annual numbers requires using an older model that counts the nativeborn children of immigrants as "costs" created by immigrant households when those children are in school. but fails to include the taxes paid by those children of immigrants once they complete their schooling. enter the work force. and become big tax contributors. The key fiscal analysis in the report. performed in Chapter 7. corrects the flaws in the annual figures by using a dynamic model that factors in the descendants of immigrants. In response to a question from the subcommittee. Ronald Lee noted that. with the necessary assumptions. a dynamic analysis would likely show at least 49 of the 50 States come out ahead fiscally from legal immigration. with California a close call. Jim Smith. chairman of the NAS study. testified that "Due to the immigrants who arrived since 1980. total Gross National Product is about $200 billion higher each year." In other words. recent immigrants will add approximately $2 trillion to the nations GNP over the course of the 1990s. I ask to have printed in the RECORD a recent Wall Street Journal article that goes into greater detail on the Academy study.