EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of
an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual
expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is
$25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a
household headed by a U.S. citizen.
Nearly half of those expenditures ($12.3 billion) result
from the costs of K-12 education for the children of illegal aliens — both
those illegally in the country and those born in the United States. Another
major outlay ($2.1 billion) results from the need to provide supplemental
English language instruction to Limited English Proficient students, many of
whom are children of illegal aliens. Together, these educational costs are 57.1
percent of total expenditures.
Other fiscal outlays result from the costs of medical care
($4.0 billion), public assistance services ($800 million), administration of
justice functions ($4.4 billion), and general governmental services ($1.6
billion).
Because some tax revenue is collected from the illegal alien
population, we include an estimate of this revenue from sales, income, property
and "sin" taxes. Yet, it should be kept in mind that the $3.5 billion
in tax collections is not truly an offset to the fiscal costs, because similar,
and likely greater, tax revenue would be collected if the same jobs were filled
by legal workers.
The adoption of new amnesty legislation, such as Senate bill
S.774, the so-called Gang of Eight bill, backed by the Obama administration,
would not be an economic benefit to Californian taxpayers as some have argued.
Amnesty advocates assert that providing legal status to illegal aliens would
reduce the cost of "undocumented immigrants." That is akin to arguing
that the way to reduce speeding on the highways is to abolish speed limits.
Doing so would eliminate speeding, but it would not eliminate the danger of
operating vehicles at excessive speed, and, arguably, would have the opposite
effect. Similarly, converting illegal aliens into legal residents would reduce
the size of the illegal alien population, but it would not reduce the overall
fiscal outlays associated with that population, and arguably would
significantly increase them as the newly legalized residents became eligible
for public assistance that was denied to them while they did not have legal
status. It would also lead to additional illegal immigration as happened
following the 1986 amnesty, which would further increase the fiscal burden.
The costs related to the presence of illegal aliens can be
lowered. The most effective step a state can take to discourage the arrival of
illegal aliens is to utilize the E-Verify screening system designed to prevent
employers from hiring illegal workers. California instead is moving in the
opposite direction by adopting measures designed to accommodate the presence of
illegal aliens. A.B. 4, the so-called Trust Act, restricts the cooperation
between state and local law enforcement agencies with federal immigration
authorities. A more recent law, A.B. 60, gives illegal aliens access to
driver’s licenses. This measure alone is going to cost the state of California,
by its own admission, $64.7 million per year.
Source:http://www.fairus.org/publications/the-fiscal-burden-of-illegal-immigration-on-california-taxpayers
Comments
So,
California’s 3 million illegal immigrants cost the state $25.3 billion a year
and pay $3.5 billion in taxes, so the net cost is $21.8 billion or 86%. Other states take a proportionate loss. We have about 12 million illegal immigrants
in the U.S. and it is growing. Using the
California numbers as a guide, we could multiply their experience by 4. That
would put the U.S. cost around $100 billion with a net cost of $86 billion per
year.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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