Ted Cruz's Nonfactual Illegal Immigration Figures Explored

The Following post first appeared on FactCheck.org.

Sen. Ted Cruz says there will be “20 or 30 million” people living in the U.S. illegally “in another 10, 20 years” if the Senate immigration bill becomes law. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill, if enacted, will reduce future illegal immigration by 33 percent to 50 percent compared with current law.

The Republican freshman senator from Texas offered his estimate on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing the impact of the bill on the political future of one of its sponsors, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

Cruz, July 21: If the Gang of Eight bill became the law, in another 10, 20 years, we wouldn’t have 11 million people here illegally, we’d have 20 or 30 million.

We asked the senator’s office to support that statement. His spokesman, Sean Rushton, said that “it was not a factual statement — it was an opinion.”

Rushton, July 23: Senator Cruz’s statement cannot possibly be fact-checked, because it was not a factual statement — it was an opinion. Sen. Cruz obviously cannot cite any “facts” about what the level of illegal immigration will be in 10 or 20 years. He made a prediction about future levels of illegal immigration based on contingent future events, so there are no data that can prove or disprove this statement. Any attempt to assess the truth or falsity of this statement would simply be political editorializing, rather than an assessment of the validity of empirical, factual statements about the world as it exists today.

Nobody can predict the future, but there is a nonpartisan congressional office that produces reports for members of Congress to consider when making policy decisions. We’re referring, of course, to the Congressional Budget Office, which was created by Congress in 1974 to provide “impartial information about budgetary and economic issues,” CBO says. And CBO estimates that in 10 years there would be 6.4 million “future unauthorized residents” without the legislation and 4 million with it — a “net decline in future unauthorized residents” of 37.5 percent.

We arrived at those numbers by reviewing two different CBO reports.