Another Reason For Immigration Reform

Immigration reform that has a path to citizenship is smart for a lot of reasons, but Digby kind of blew my mind with this:

An analysis by the Social Security Administration says a bipartisan immigration bill pending in the Senate would boost the retirement program's trust fund by adding millions of taxpayers to the economy.

The finding comes in a letter to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who requested the analysis, from Stephen C. Gross, chief actuary for the agency.

It could provide a boost for the immigration bill, which has been attacked by some conservatives as overly costly, as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to begin amending the measure on Thursday.

The analysis says the bill would add more than $300 billion in net additional revenues to Social Security and Medicare over the coming decade.

Gross writes that the overall effect of the bill on the long-range trust fund balance "will be positive."

Now just to be clear: The people who want to destroy social security will always want to do so, and there is no actual crisis that requires social security reform. So maybe none of this will matter. Then again, anything that makes it harder to advocate cutting social security = positive.