Right-wing media outlets cherry-picked data from a Congressional Budget Office report on the Senate’s immigration reform proposal to claim that immigrants who would benefit under the bill will drive down the wages of U.S. workers. In fact, while CBO predicts a slight decrease in wages in the first decade, that decrease would be outweighed by the larger increase in wages in the following decade. CBO also noted that its estimates “do not necessarily imply that current U.S. residents would be worse off” in the first decade.
A post on Breitbart.com asserted that CBO found that “illegal immigrants who would receive amnesty, or legalized status, would see a spike in their income while Americans’ incomes dropped.” The post added that “it would be harder for Americans to find jobs if the bill passed.” Similarly, on her radio show, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham aired comments by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) claiming the bill would depress U.S. wages, then stated that the bill “goes beyond all common sense”:
In reality, the CBO report on the economic impact of the Senate immigration bill states that “average wages for the entire labor force would be 0.1 percent lower in 2023 and 0.5 percent higher in 2033 under the legislation than under current law.” CBO continues:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/19/right-wing-media-misrepresent-cbo-to-pit-us-wor/194525
The Secular Jurist 