Immigration Bill Will Hike Entitlement Costs, Warns Sen. DeMint

An argument against the welfare state, not immigration

The most significant revision of U.S. immigration laws in a generation will come under a new line of attack for its potential costs to public programs including Social Security and Medicare.

Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina and now president of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, will lead the assault with a report from his Republican-leaning institute as early as next week on the costs government would bear in offering a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee starts weighing the immigration bill next week, the argument over costs—which helped sideline the last attempt at an immigration revision in 2007—will join Republican opposition to citizenship for the undocumented and demands for sealing the nation's borders as factors that could prevent Congress from acting again this year.