Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), now president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, warned Sunday that comprehensive immigration reform will cost the United States trillions over the lifetimes of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.
“The study you’ll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country,” DeMint said on ABC’s “This Week.” “There’s no reason we can’t begin to fix our immigration system so that we won’t make this problem worse. But the bill that’s being presented is unfair to those who came here legally. It will cost Americans trillions of dollars. It’ll make our unlawful immigration system worse.”
Questioned about this price tag, DeMint suggested that the Congressional Budget Office is merely a puppet of Congress and that Heritage is the only group with a reliable study on the costs of the reform bill.
“Well, CBO said Obamacare wouldn’t cost us anything. They’re basically puppets of the Congress and the assumptions they put in the bill. Heritage is the only organization that has done an analysis of the cost,” DeMint said.
An opponent of reform, DeMint was instrumental in killing immigration reform legislation in 2007.
