Gold behind golden door

Anew nonpartisan report from Congress’ official economic scorekeeper has kicked the legs out from under opponents of immigration reform — yet again — by proving that dire predictions about the costs of an overhaul are just plain false. In fact, the bipartisan Senate reform plan will slash the deficit by many hundreds of billions of dollars over decades.

The rigorous analysis from the Congressional Budget Office is the most persuasive evidence yet that creating a path to citizenship for the millions of illegals here, raising the number of allowable temporary workers — highly skilled, unskilled and agricultural — and other fixes will pay tremendous dividends throughout the American economy.

The study found the law, if enacted as written, would increase direct federal spending by $262 billion from 2014 to 2023, including the Medicare expenses often cited by anti-immigration politicians. Those are the taxpayer-funded costs.

The benefits to the federal treasury? Increased revenues of $459 billion over the same period, due primarily to added income and payroll taxes forked over by those same immigrants.

The difference: a net plus of $197 billion. And between 2024 and 2033, CBO forecasts a deficit reduction of a whopping $700 billion.

It gets better. Another CBO analysis says the 10.4 million permanent residents added to the population by 2023, plus 1.6 million temporary workers and their families, would add 6 million people to the U.S. labor force, increasing the gross domestic product 3.3% in 2023 and 5.4% in 2033.

Those clear-eyed findings, naturally, have Republicans who are trying to kill reform foaming at the mouth.

GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, preferring ideology to math, accused the CBO of hiding the “true cost from taxpayers.” Of course he’d say that. He and his allies were praying the projections would be an economic disaster.

They were touting a made-up number churned out by ideological allies at the Heritage Foundation that relied on flawed assumptions — and ignored most pieces of the bill — to calculate the “cost of amnesty” at more than $6.3 trillion.

Absolute bunk co-authored by a man who, it turned out, believes Hispanics have lower IQs than whites.

Immigration has been instrumental in the foundation and growth of this country. The reform bill, along with tighter border security, could help cement the U.S.’ future well into the 21st century.

It must pass this year.