US: The US Senate's embattled immigration bill would raise government spending by as much as $126 billion over the next decade, as the government begins paying out federal benefits to millions of new legal workers and cracks down on the border, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO)analysis concludes.
Law-enforcement measures alone would necessitate hiring nearly 31,000 federal workers in the next five years, while building and maintaining 870 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers would cost $3.3 billion.
Newly legalised immigrants would claim nearly $50 billion in federal benefits such as the earned income and child tax credits, Medicaid and pensions.
The CBO report is the most detailed analysis to date of legislation that has divided the Republican Party, energised millions of Latinos and become a focal point of congressional campaigns from southern Arizona to upstate New York.
Under the legislation, passed this spring by a bipartisan Senate coalition and backed by the Irish Government, tough border security measures would be coupled with a path to legal work and citizenship for most of the nation's 11 million undocumented workers and a new guest worker programme for prospective migrants.
President George Bush applauded its passage, but House of Representative Republican leaders have dug in their heels against it, favouring a House-passed measure that would make felons of illegal immigrants, build hundreds of miles of fencing on the southern border and offer no new guest worker programmes.
The non-partisan CBO analysis is sure to offer fuel for the fight.
Supporters of the legislation cautioned that the CBO's total needs to be put into context. Most of the $78 billion in discretionary spending that the Senate bill authorises through 2016 would fund law-enforcement measures that conservatives are pushing for anyway.
The five-year cost estimates include $800 million to hire 1,000 additional border patrol agents; $2.6 billion to build detention facilities for 20,000; $3.3 billion to build and maintain 370 miles of border fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the US- Mexico frontier, and $1.6 billion to establish a computerised system to verify the eligibility of applicants for lawful employment.
However, in the long run, tax revenue generated by new workers would ease the baby-boom generation's burden on social security and offset virtually all of the additional spending, said James Horney, a senior fellow at the liberal Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities.
By 2016, CBO researchers estimate, more than 16 million people would either become legal permanent residents under the bill or attain some other legal status. That includes 4.4 million legalised undocumented workers, 3.3 million guest workers and 2.6 million family members brought in through the new programmes. By 2026, the addition to the US population would jump to 24.4 million.
That number is far lower than the conservative Heritage Foundation's estimate of 103 million immigrants legalised by 2026. However the CBO estimate is far higher than the eight million figure White House officials have pointed to in their rebuttal of the Heritage study.
Meanwhile, demographers say white people soon will be a minority in 35 of the country's 50 largest cities.
An analysis of census data released last week has shown that the white non-Hispanic population in another three of America's 50 largest cities has become a minority. In Phoenix, Tucson and Denver, the white population has recently fallen below 50 per cent, according to William H Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.
He predicts another four cities will soon follow. Whites will become a minority in Arlington, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Las Vegas within two years and in Austin, Texas, within four years, he said.