Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday criticized a Heritage Foundation study on immigration reform legislation introduced in the Senate, calling the think tank's report "flawed."
"Their argument is based on a single premise, which I think is flawed," Rubio said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. "That is these people are disproportionately poor because they have no education and they will be poor for the rest of their lives in the U.S. Quite frankly that’s not the immigration experience in the U.S. That’s certainly not my family’s experience in the U.S. The folks described in that report are my family. My mother and dad didn’t graduate high school and I would not say they were a burden on the United States."
The conservative think tank's study, released Monday, estimated that the immigration reform proposal would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion over the next few decades. Heritage Foundation says the immigration proposal offers amnesty to immigrants living in the country illegally.
A number of pro-immigration lawmakers and groups criticized the study. But Rubio, seen as a leader in the Republican party on immigration, was noticeably silent on Monday.
Rubio also said that the study made some good points.
"We do want to address welfare benefits in the United States, the structure of the entitlement programs," Rubio continued. "But that’s not just true for immigrants; that’s true for everybody. ... I think he report, as much as anything else, is an argument for welfare reform and entitlement reform. Not necessarily an anti-illegal immigration reform study."
Other members of the group of senators that introduced the immigration proposal also weighed in on the Heritage study. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the study completely ignored the "economic benefits" of the immigration proposal.
"New Heritage study claims huge cost for Immigration Reform," Flake wrote on his Twitter account. "Ignores economic benefits. No dynamic scoring."
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