The American Action Network (AAN) continued to go full bore at opponents of a Senate comprehensive immigration reform plan with the Tuesday release of a new analysis of the economic benefits it believes that plan will bring. The AAN, which acts as a promotional wing of the conservative think tank the American Action Forum, is distributing that new analysis to the offices of Republican lawmakers in the House, where the GOP majority has defied its party leadership in the Senate by not considering the bipartisan bill. The analysis - which is based off of numbers given by a Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI) study of economic data and new worker visas as well as a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report - comes with an interactive web tool which indicates the number of jobs the AAN says would be created in each of the United States' congressional districts.
The AAN estimates that an average of 14,000 jobs per congressional district - and 6 million jobs in total - would be created by the reform by the year 2023. That's twice as much as a Social Security actuary's report on the positive job growth stemming from giving legal status and a path to citizenship for many of the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. No district would see fewer than 7,000 jobs created in the given time frame. The AAN hopes that these numbers will help persuade Republican lawmakers of the benefits of the Senate's reform and perhaps lend a hand to representatives who would need to explain their support for the Senate's reform to their constituents.
Some GOP members have balked at the REMI study on which the AAN's tool is based. ABC News noted that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) said in a statement earlier this month, "We don't have a shortage of workers - we have a shortage of jobs." And in July, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another chief opponent of the Senate's immigration reform bill, said at a rally in Washington D.C., "If this bill is passed it will increase unemployment" and added that it "benefits a select few ... at the cost of the American worker."
It's not the only sunny economic prediction the AAN and its affiliate think tank have made about the Senate's bill: a report released in May by the American Action Forum said that the bill would save the United States about $410 billion over the next 10 years. Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at the AAF, wrote in the May report that "benchmark immigration reform would increase GDP by nearly 1 percentage point, increase per capita income by $1,700, and reduce the federal deficit by $2.7 trillion."
The AAN has been pouring money into its pro-reform campaign, with several six-figure ad buys broadcasting on national television.
RELATED: How Much Would The Senate's Immigration Reform Cost? US Could Save $410 Billion Over Next Decade, Says American Action Forum
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