The Economic Cost of House Bill 28 and Senate Bill 10 in Pennsylvania

If Pennsylvania House Bill 28 and Senate Bill 10 were to be signed into law, we estimate significant economic cost to the State of Pennsylvania. These bills would punish local government entities who limit cooperation and information sharing with federal authorities on immigration matters. Using the Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey (ACS) five-year data and the Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we estimate the economic loss as it relates to jobs, earnings, taxes, and GDP if 10 percent of undocumented immigrants were to leave Pennsylvania due to the restrictive environment the bills would create. The 10 percent estimate is based on a study of the impact of Arizona’s SB 1070 law, which created a similarly restrictive environment for immigrants in that state (see detailed methodology).

Using an economically conservative approach, we broke down the number of undocumented immigrants by industry and calculated how decreased work in that industry would impact the economy more broadly.

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