Immigration Reform 2013 News: Warren Buffet Calls For More Logical Immigration Policy; Jim Demint Says Reform Would Cost Trillions

One of the world's most respected financial minds Sunday called for Washington to adopt what he called "a more logical immigration policy" in order to help the U.S. workforce attract more bright talents from abroad.

Investing guru Warren Buffett told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants should be included in any legislation designed to reform the nation's immigration laws, noting that such a success was critical in deepening the talent pool of the U.S. labor force.

"We've been bouncing this one around for a considerable period of time," Buffett said Sunday. "I think we should have a more logical immigration policy. It would mean we would attract a lot of people, but we would attract the people we want to attract in particular -- in terms of education, tens or hundreds of thousands of people. We enhance their talents and have them stick around here."

Buffett also criticized the "more partisan" environment on Capitol Hill, a view that has been reflected in the recent fighting on the bipartisan U.S. Senate panel's immigration proposal during Judiciary Committee Meetings in the last few weeks.

"It's tough to watch what happens in Washington," Buffett said. "It's gotten more and more partisan."

While supporters of the immigration bill proposed by the "gang of eight" have argued for the positive economic impact that reforming immigration laws will have on the nation, others have been arguing the opposite.

Jim Demint, a former Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina and the current head of the conservative think tank known as the Heritage Foundation, told ABC's "This Week" that the proposed immigration bill presented by the "gang of eight" would "cost Americans trillions of dollars," according to an updated study from the foundation to be released this week.

The study, originally released in 2007, projected that the costs of immigration reform to the U.S. would be around $2.6 trillion, assuming that all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. were granted what was dubbed as "amnesty."

"The study you'll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country," DeMint said. "There's no reason we can't begin to fix our immigration system so that we won't make this problem worse. But the bill that's being presented is unfair to those who came here legally. It will cost Americans trillions of dollars. It'll make our unlawful immigration system worse."

However, the study has also been dissected by critics such as Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think thank.

Nowrasteh wrote in April that the study had a "flawed methodology" that "grossly exaggerated" the costs of immigration reform  to federal taxpayers while it undercounted or discounted the positive tax and economic contributions of legalizing immigrants living illegally in the U.S.