The Cost of Doing Nothing: Dollars, Lives, and Opportunities Lost in the Wait for Immigration Reform

Yesterday, the Immigration Policy Center releases The Cost of Doing Nothing: Dollars, Lives, and Opportunities Lost in the Wait for Immigration Reform. This fact sheet highlights the high cost of Congress' failure to act on immigration reform legislation. The “enforcement only” approach to immigration policy has failed to curb unauthorized immigration and has wasted taxpayer dollars while creating a slow-motion humanitarian catastrophe. Additionally, the full economic potential of unauthorized immigrants as workers, taxpayers, consumers, and entrepreneurs has been squandered because they are unable to earn legal status. In other words, as Congress continues to ponder the possibility of enacting immigration reform legislation, the broken machinery of the U.S. immigration system continues to destroy lives and families while draining the federal budget and undermining the economy. These are the costs of inaction.

KJ

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