Former President Donald Trump has accused President Joe Biden of granting a “mass amnesty” to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants who may be eligible for Social Security and Medicaid benefits, depriving elderly Americans of these benefits.
President Biden issued two presidential pardons for illegal immigrants on Tuesday. The first of the two, the broader pardon, will allow roughly 500,000 illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years and are married to U.S. citizens to obtain green cards.
Additionally, approximately 50,000 children of illegal immigrant parents married to U.S. citizens will also be able to apply for green cards. Overall, this amnesty ensures that at least 500,000 illegal immigrants will eventually be eligible for naturalization for U.S. citizenship.
The second amnesty will grant work visas to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, including those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for young immigrants who have graduated from U.S. universities.
Caroline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that amnesty would add hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to the Social Security and Medicaid rolls, straining the systems for older Americans who should be receiving them.
“Biden’s mass amnesty plan will undoubtedly lead to further increases in immigrant crime, cost taxpayers millions of dollars they cannot afford, strain public services, strip Social Security and Medicare benefits from elderly Americans to pay for benefits to illegal immigrants, and deplete the systems that Americans have paid into throughout their working lives,” Leavitt said.
“Through his mass amnesty order, Biden has created new opportunities for illegal immigration,” she continued.
Indeed, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants “would put a tremendous strain on the trust fund for two reasons,” says Jason Richwine of the Center for Immigration Studies. Note:
First, as mentioned above, many illegal immigrants already pay taxes into the program, and their contributions are actually part of the Congressional Budget Office’s base budget estimate. The amnesty would force the government to cover the additional costs associated with these recipients’ new beneficiary status, without the additional revenue that would normally be available from new contributors. [Emphasis added]
Number 2, Undocumented immigrants tend to have lower incomes and fewer years of employment in the United States than the average participant.In other words, amnesty would provide them with an above-average return on their contributions. [Emphasis added]
Richwine’s study suggests that amnesty would turn illegal immigrants into “pure spenders, taking in more benefits than they pay in taxes,” putting a strain on Social Security and Medicaid.
“If 10 million illegal immigrants were granted amnesty, the total cost to Social Security and Medicare would be roughly $1.3 trillion, equivalent to a one-time transfer of 6 percent of GDP,” Richwine wrote, suggesting that Biden’s amnesty could cost Social Security and Medicare as much as $71 billion.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
