Thread: Is an anti-immigration think tank moving left?

Allison Shelley/Getty

01/21/14 05:36 PM
By Benjy Sarlin
msnbc

Conservative economist and writer Stephen Moore has spent more than a decade calling for immigration reform. Former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has spent the same period rallying against “amnesty” at every turn. A match made in heaven!

This week, Moore announced he is joining the DeMint-helmed Heritage Foundation as its chief economist. Heritage has been one of the most prominent opponents of immigration reform, pressuring Republican lawmakers last year to oppose bipartisan legislation, but Moore says he won’t shy away from addressing the issue in his new role.

The move puts Moore and DeMint on the same team during a critical stretch for immigration reform in Congress. Moore has pledged to work with the former South Carolina lawmaker to “develop a pro-growth immigration policy.”

“I don’t want Heritage to be viewed as anti-immigration,” he said in an interview with Heritage blog The Foundry about his new position. “We all know immigration is vitally important to our economy. Our goal will be to develop an immigration policy that’s in the best interest of America, our economy, and allows the United States to get the best and brightest people to come here.”

Last May, Heritage put out a study claiming a bipartisan Senate bill offering earned legal status to undocumented immigrants would cost the government a net $6.3 trillion. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office disagreed, estimating that it would actually reduce the deficit by $900 billion over the next two decades by increasing growth.

But the debate over methodology was soon overshadowed by a Washington Post report that one of the co-authors of the Heritage study, Jason Richwine, had once argued that Hispanic immigrants are unlikely to succeed due to their low IQs. Richwine left Heritage, which disavowed his views, shortly after Yahoo’s Chris Moody revealed he had written articles for a white nationalist website.

Moore, who served as a member of the pro-reform Wall Street Journal editorial board until now, has long taken a different view. Way back in 1997, he wrote a piece for libertarian think tank Cato arguing that it was a “myth” that immigrants “impose a financial burden on taxpayers” or that they “depress wages and working conditions.” In 2004, he defended President George W. Bush from charges of “amnesty” as the 43rd president tried unsuccessfully to get immigration reform past Congress and warned ominously that the GOP risked losing Hispanic and Asian voters if they opposed him. His warnings proved correct.

While Moore has criticized the Senate’s most recent bill, he’s been publicly supportive of its broad goals, praising its guest worker provision at a pro-immigration event hosted by Bush last year. He’s also tangled with Heritage directly, disputing a claim by DeMint last May that the late economist Milton Friedman was opposed to an “open borders” immigration policy.

The question now is whether Moore can drag Heritage toward the center on immigration.

“I’ve known Stephen Moore for 20 years and during that time he’s been an unwavering supporter of generous legal immigration levels and common sense immigration reforms,” Frank Sharry, president of pro-reform America’s Voice, told msnbc. “Knowing his commitment to the issue, I predict that he will have much more impact on Heritage’s approach to immigration policy than they will have on his.”

In an email to msnbc, Heritage vice president of communications Michael Gonzales downplayed the impact of Moore’s hiring on the think tank’s immigration policy.

“Heritage has wanted a pro-growth immigration policy for years,” Gonzales said.

DeMint and Moore might find some common ground. Throughout his career, Moore has called on Congress to offer more legal employment opportunities for migrant workers while keeping them cut off from federal benefits. DeMint doesn’t believe it’s politically possible to prevent immigrants from eventually becoming eligible for entitlements Medicare and Social Security, but at least it’s a general point of agreement. Heritage researchers have also signaled support for a much less controversial expansion of high-skilled worker visas and some form of temporary worker program to fill lower-skilled jobs. Perhaps Moore and DeMint will find a way to offer more detailed plans while skirting the issue of what to do with existing immigrants.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/heritage-...ft-immigration

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Conn Carroll | Jan 23, 2014
townhall



Ever since The Heritage Foundation announced it was hiring Stephen Moore to be the think tank's chief economist, there have been rumblings on the left hoping that the new hire signaled a coming policy change on immigration.

For example, Talking Points Memo's Dylan Scott reports:

Outsider observers in the conservative sphere were emphatic: Moore's hiring could be a turning point for Heritage, both in general and particularly on immigration, this Congress's best shot -- however remote -- to leave a meaningful legislative mark.

Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, who has called the Senate-passed immigration bill "a solid improvement over the current immigration system," told TPM that Moore's presence "bodes very well for an ideological policy shift" at Heritage. He compared the move to House Speaker John Boehner hiring the top immigration analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center to his staff in December, which reform advocates also viewed as a potential turning of the tide on the issue.

"It absolutely portends a change over there at the Heritage Foundation," he said. "Talk in D.C. is very cheap, but when people start shifting their staffs that shows they're aligning with a different position, that actually means something."

Contra TPM, amnesty activists should not get their hopes up.

Moore's hiring in no way portends a shift in Heritage's immigration position. Reached for comment, one Heritage staffer said, "This is nothing more than liberal daydreaming. Research has shown that amnesty is costly, unfair, and won’t solve our immigration problems. Heritage has always advocated for pro-growth immigration reform that improves our legal system and helps the millions waiting in line to come to the U.S. lawfully."

And it is true. Heritage has always been for pro-growth immigration reform. Here, for example, is a 2008 paper calling for more H-1B visas on the grounds they will lead to more jobs and faster economic growth.

What Heritage is against today, and will be against tomorrow, is holding common sense immigration reform, that everyone agrees on, hostage in exchange for amnesty for those who are currently in the country illegally.

As vice president for domestic and economic policy Derrick Morgan explained in the National Interest yesterday:

The American people do not trust government to fix the problem while granting amnesty for good reason. Passage of the 1986 amnesty was predicated on it being a one-time event. Promises of workplace enforcement and border security were not adequately kept: we now have some 11 million unlawful immigrants in the United States. ... Pushing forward an unpopular amnesty policy is misguided. Any public relations reason for doing so has no currency outside the beltway: only three percent of Americans think immigration is the top priority. The President’s insistence on amnesty could sabotage a chance to reform our legal immigration system, enhance enforcement, and secure the border. As explained elsewhere, a workable step-by-step plan would address areas of common agreement first, and leave the most difficult questions for another time.

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