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RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The immigration reform bill under consideration in the Senate would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. And depending on who is crunching the numbers, there are contrasting views on what immigration reform would cost, and whether it would help or hurt the U.S. economy.
The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, estimates that legalizing the undocumented could boost the country's gross domestic product anywhere from $832 billion dollars to $1.4 trillion dollars, depending on the time frame for granting citizenship by creating new jobs and raising incomes and tax revenue. The conservative Heritage Foundation, on the other hand, calculates that immigrants gaining legal status would receive $9.4 trillion dollars in government benefits and services over their lifetimes, while paying just $3.1 trillion dollars in taxes, resulting in a net cost of $6.3 trillion dollars.
We're joined now by the authors of both studies.
Robert Lynch is a professor of economics at Washington College and a visiting senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. And Robert Rector is a senior research fellow in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation.
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