"At
the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9
billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million
illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens."
— Matt O'Brien and Spencer Raley.
It is
also rather more than the single payment of $25 billion that it will cost to
build a wall -- five and a half times more, and every year.
"Undocumented
immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other
Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes..." — John R.
Lott.
In
2015, included in the DEA's drug-threat assessment was the fact that drug
overdoses killed more people in the United States than car accidents or guns.
Many of these drugs [were] smuggled in large volumes by drug cartels."
In his State of the Union address on January 30, US President Donald J. Trump referred
to the brutal murder of
two 16-year-old girls from Long Island in December 2016 by members of the "savage MS-13 gang,"
responsible for a spate of other gruesome killings in the area, as well.
Many of these gang members, he explained, had entered the United States illegally.
"For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and
gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities," he said.
Calling on Congress "to finally
close the deadly loopholes that have allowed... criminal gangs to break into
our country," he listed the four pillars of his immigration-reform
proposal:
A path to citizenship for 1.8
million illegal immigrants who were brought to America by their parents.
The construction of a "great
wall on the southern border" and enforcement by agents patrolling and
securing the border.
Ending the visa lottery, "a program that randomly plans out green cards
without regard for skill, merit, for the safety of American people."
Ending the "current, broken
system" of chain migration of distant relatives, and limiting sponsorships
to spouses and minor children.
Although he did not specify this in
his speech, Trump reportedly is seeking $25 billion from Congress to fund the wall. Opponents of the wall
have been arguing that illegal immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than legal immigrants or native-born
Americans; that illegal immigration has been a boon to the economy,
rather than a drain on it; and that the cost both
of deportation and a wall far exceeds the benefits of both. These claims are
repeatedly voiced by the Trump administration's detractors, as
part of their campaign to accuse the president of racism; but
what are the facts?
To set the record
straight, let us take a look at a number of
those that have been obscured or ignored by the media.
As far as the cost of the wall is
concerned, a study released in September 2017 by the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR) reveals that, "At the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9
billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million
illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens."
This, the report says, is a nearly $3 billion increase in the cost since 2013.
It is also rather more than the single payment of $25 billion that it will cost
to build a wall – five and a half times more, and every year.
The same goes for the cost of deporting illegal immigrants. According to Steven A. Camarota, director of research at
the Center for Immigration Studies,"...The average cost of a deportation
is much smaller than the net fiscal drain created by the average illegal
immigrant," in part due to the fact that "illegal immigrants
overwhelmingly have modest levels of education — most have not completed high
school or have only a high
school education...creating more in costs for
government than they pay in taxes."
The question of the rates of criminality among illegal aliens vs. those of legal immigrants and American-born
citizens has been examined by John R. Lott, Jr., president of the Crime
Prevention Research Center, using Arizona's prison population as a microcosm
for study. According to Lott, the ability to measure the crime-rate among
illegal immigrants in the U.S. has been difficult, due to many factors,
including the lack of a national data base and "primitive"
methodology – such as "simple, cross-sectional analysis to see whether
areas with higher immigrant populations have higher crime rates," and
"a purely time series approach... look at the United States as a whole and
note that crime has decreased since 1990 as immigration has increased."
The advantage of the Arizona Department of Corrections study, Lott says, is
that "over our 32.5-year period, we know each prisoner who entered the
prison system, their criminal convictions history, and whether he is a documented
or undocumented immigrant. The only mystery is why this type of data has not
been utilized until now."
Peter Kirsanow wryly solved the mystery in National Review, writing: "Unfortunately, almost every public official
not named Jeff Sessions guards against disclosure of illegal-immigrant crime
data more tenaciously than disclosure of nuclear launch codes."
According to Lott, whose research
spans 1985-2017:
"Arizona's prison population
data allow us to compare undocumented immigrants' share of the prison
population with their estimated share of the state population...For the first
time, we break down the data to examine differences between US citizens,
undocumented immigrants, and legal permanent residents. One advantage of using
convictions rather than just reported crimes is that convictions depend on a
'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard of evidence and thus are much less likely
to count innocent people."
The findings are
unequivocal, as the following summary illustrates: "Undocumented
immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other
Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer
sentences, more likely to be classified as dangerous, and 45% more likely to be
gang members than U.S. citizens...There are dramatic differences between in the
criminal histories of convicts who are U.S. citizens and undocumented
immigrants...
"Young undocumented immigrants
commit crime at twice the rate of young U.S. citizens. These undocumented
immigrants also tend to commit more serious crimes. If undocumented immigrants
committed crime nationally as they do in Arizona, in 2016 they would have been
responsible for over 1,000 more murders, 5,200 rapes, 8,900 robberies, 25,300
aggravated assaults, and 26,900 burglaries."
These numbers do not even include
the cost to American taxpayers of the toll taken on America's children by
illegally imported drugs. Although available information on this is at best
spotty, the key finding from the DEA's
2017 National Drug Threat Assessment is
that the "most commonly reported greatest drug threat was heroin, at 44.1
percent of law enforcement responses... This was followed by 29.8 percent of
respondents indicating methamphetamine was their greatest drug threat, 9.3 percent
reporting controlled prescription drugs..."
This tells us something about the
extent of the problem, but not enough. The 2010 drug-threat assessment, released a year after the previous administration took
office, revealed that,
"From January through November
2009, U.S. seizures of illegal drugs in transit exceeded 1,626 metric tons,
indicating that DTOs succeed in moving several thousand tons of cocaine, methamphetamine,
marijuana, heroin, and MDMA into the United States annually. There are unique
smuggling and transportation methods..."
In 2015, included in the DEA's
drug-threat assessment was the fact that drug overdoses killed more people in the United States than car accidents or guns. As
was noted by the BBC
at the time, "Many of these drugs are
smuggled in large volumes by drug cartels..."
The late Democrat Senator Daniel
Patrick Moynihan famously said,
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."
His successors in Congress would do well to remember this while debating the
issue of illegal immigration. They certainly need to keep it in mind when
voting on the administration's proposed plan.
Ruthie
Blum is the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the
'Arab Spring.'"
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11829/illegal-immigration-cost
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