Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller here on the bulwark takes feed. I'm excited to talk to somebody I've been following on social media for a while who's just dropping bangers after bangers on fx.com.

He is the Cato Institute's director of immigration studies and the Seltz Foundation chair and immigration policies and expert on immigration, border security, and interior enforcement. It's David Beer. What's up, man? Thanks for having me on. Well, we had to have you on after your testimony last week. You were on Capitol Hill. We're going to play a little bit of it. But why did our esteemed Senate call you forth for your expertise last week? How did you end up there? Yeah, so this was the U.S.

Senate Budget Committee. They were ostensibly studying the issue of the cost of immigration to

sanctuary cities. And I was invited because the Cato Institute, my colleagues and I published a comprehensive

analysis of the effect of immigration and immigrants on government budgets over the last 30 years.

And we found that they reduced government deficits by $14.5 trillion.

And so this was the purpose of me being invited was to discuss this budgetary issue and

how immigrants can be a benefit to the United States and to government budgets generally.

I'm sorry.

I'm told that immigrants are a drain on our resources and they're stealing from us and that taxpayers are covering the bill.

Is that that wrong?

No, immigrants, when they come here, we basically get a free worker, right?

You know, the average immigrant shows up at the age of 25.

He's ready to enter the labor force. He gets right in there. He gets his hands dirty. He's working. Or maybe he's

computing, you know, whatever the type of worker we're talking about. They're contributing to the economy, not sucking in resources.

And of course, you know, you can find those counter examples. You can find those anecdotes.

You can find, you know, you can pick and choose. But when you look at the big picture,

the big picture is immigrants in the United States face all kinds of unique barriers to applying for government

benefits. If you're here illegally, you're categorically barred from most federal benefits,

including the two largest sources of government spending, Medicare and Social Security.

And so there's a huge difference between the immigrant population

who's excluded from many of these benefits and the U.S. born population who can, you can get on

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