Last week conservative activist Drew McKissick penned an op-ed for the state paper titled “Who pays for Amnesty” which noted:

And speaking of selling, who’s going to pay for this bill?  It has been well documented that low-skilled immigrants receive far more in government benefits and services than they pay in taxes.  A recent Heritage Foundation study puts the number at a net cost of approximately twenty-thousand dollars per year per immigrant, which totals up to between 2.3 and 2.5 TRILLION dollars over the next two decades.  But what’s a few trillion dollars between friends.

Sen. Graham office has responded to this by pointing out this Congressional Budget Office study in an e-mail:

Here’s a story on that very question…from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

The analysis found that over the next decade, newly legalized immigrants and guest workers would generate $48 billion in additional tax and Social Security revenues, while using about $23 billion worth of tax credits and social services. Thus, the newly legal immigrant population would contribute a net of about $26 billion over the decade, the report said.

But this CBO report only addresses the next ten years (the Heritage report examined the next twenty years). If you only look at the impact of the Senate immigration bill over the next ten years, you don’t get a complete picture of its total cost.

Social Security and Medicare are the two largest expenditures to our budget. Most of the immigrants who will be able to obtain legal status and eventual citizenship will not qualify for the benefits during the next 10 years. But in time, these illegal immigrants will reach the required age to receive these benefits, which will put an even greater burden on our budget. Medicare is projected to reach solvency by 2028 and Social Security will reach solvency by 2049. By adding 12 million more individuals to these programs, we will almost certainly see these projected solvency dates move up the calendar.

As a 23 year-old, I believe this legislation will likely leave my generation with highly expensive tab to pay. Something I hope the Senators backing this proposal will realize. The CBO report might make a good case to most reporters and bloggers, but as a person who never got a grade lower than a 97 on the four upper level political budgeting courses I took at USC, I can tell you that this portion of the report lacks key facts necessary to understanding the total expenses involved in passing this immigration bill.

But according to Graham anybody who opposes this bill is a “bigot”. I wonder if that still applies to me since my opposition to the bill is for totally fiscal reasons?