Immigration Bill Creates Millions of Potential Voters

Adds 4.6 million by 2024, 17.3 million by 2036

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that if the Senate Gang of Eight Immigration bill (S.744) becomes law it will add more than 17 million new potential voting-age citizens by 2036. These new potential voters are in addition to the roughly 15 million that the current level of legal immigration will add by 2036. Combined, current immigration and S.744 would create more than 32 million potential voters by 2036.

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To place these figures in perspective, the last four presidential elections were decided by 4.5 million votes on average. Even if only a modest share actually vote, the impact of these new votes on future elections will likely be substantial. 

Dr. Steven Camarota, CIS Director of Research and author of the publication, comments, "Current immigration policy is adding millions of new voters each decade; the Gang of Eight bill will add millions more.  This is one of the most important consequences of immigration.  Will it result in voters who need or want more government services?  Or, will it reshape American foreign policy? There has been almost no discussion of the impact on the electorate."   

View the report at: http://www.cis.org/how-many-new-voters-would-s744-create

Among the report's findings:

• Based on the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of S.744, CIS projects that by 2024 the bill will add 4.6 million new potential voters above the number added by the current level of legal immigration. The bill will add 9.5 million potential voters by 2028 and 17.3 million by 2036.
• Of the new potential voters S.744 would create by 2036, slightly more than one-third would be a result of the bill's amnesty provisions based on CBO projections; the rest are due to the bill's large increases in future legal immigration.
• In addition to the effects of S.744, the current level of immigration will add 5.1 million new potential voting-age citizens to the country by 2024, 8.4 million by 2028, and 14.9 million by 2036.
• Combined, the current level of immigration and S.744 will create nearly 10 million potential voting-age citizens by 2024, and more than 32 million by 2036.
• The 32 million potential voters which will be created by current immigration and S.744 is slightly larger than the number of Americans over age 65 who voted in 2012.  It is also twice the size of the veterans vote and nearly triple the Hispanic vote.

These projections err on the conservative side as they only include potential immigrant voters, not their U.S.-born children. The projections take into account, mortality, return-migration, and residency requirements to naturalize.

For legal permanent immigrants to be potential voters they must be at least 18 years old and have lived in the country for at least five years, allowing them to naturalize. For most amnesty beneficiaries under S.744, it will take at least a decade for them to naturalize.

View the Senate bill, CIS Senate testimony and commentary at: http://cis.org/Border-Security-Economic-Opportunity-Immigration-Modernization-Act

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.

Contact: Marguerite Telford
[email protected], 202-466-8185

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies