Text size:

Immigration bill debate gearing up

BY TOM BRUNE | Newsday Washington Bureau

August 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - A new Congressional Budget Office estimate highlights the ambitious sweep of the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill, pegging the cost over the next decade as high as $127 billion.

But the legislation also could raise nearly $44 billion in revenues, depending on the interpretation of an unclear tax provision, lowering the net cost to about $83 billion, according to the estimate and the bill's backers.

The nonpartisan office's release of the estimate during the weekend reignited the battle over immigration reform yesterday. The estimate is likely to be fiercely debated this fall when the House and Senate seek to reconcile their versions of immigration reform. The House bill focuses on enforcement only. The Senate also includes provisions for citizenship of undocumented immigrants and a guest-worker program.

Most of the Senate bill's overall cost would go to beefing up border control and policing undocumented immigrants, according to the estimate.

The bill has two costs, the estimate said, about $78.3 billion in expenses that must be appropriated by Congress each year, and $48.4 billion of direct costs of services. Except for administration and processing costs, nearly all of the $78 billion appropriated annually is for enforcement.

The estimate provided only five years for detailed breakdowns of cost, which includes $10 billion for 31,000 new agents and investigators; $7.7 billion in grants to states and local governments for aiding in enforcement; $5.6 billion for a 370-mile fence and cars and trucks, boats, planes and unmanned aerial devices on the border; and $2.6 billion for 20 jails for undocumented immigrants.

The $48 billion in direct costs pays for government benefits for newly legalized immigrants, including $24.5 billion for Earned Income and Child tax credits for the working poor and $15.4 billion for Medicaid and Medicare.

The estimate stirred up a controversy by saying a provision in the bill to exempt employers from tax liabilities for employing undocumented immigrants in the past was worded in a way that made it also apply to the future, resulting in a $79 billion reduction in federal revenues.

But a Senate aide said the sponsors intended it be a "safe harbor" for past practices by employers, and that the language will be changed.

House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) seized on the costs of benefits for immigrants. "We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers," he said in a statement. But a supporter of the Senate bill, Benjamin Johnson, director of the nonprofit Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said the $44 billion in revenues nearly pays for the benefits, leaving the true cost at $82 billion.