The number of illegal
welfare migrants in the US is 25 to 35 million and increasing. Allowing 25
million illegals to stay in the US would cost $1.75 trillion.
Enforcing
Immigration Law Is Cost Effective, Each illegal alien costs nearly $70,000
during their lifetime, By Steven A. Camarota, 10/28/18, Center for Immigration Studies.
In
a prior analysis, we estimated that the average net
fiscal cost (taxes paid minus services used) of an illegal immigrant was
$65,292 during their lifetime — excluding their U.S.-born children. This came
to $65.3 billion per million illegal immigrants. The figures were expressed in
2016 dollars. Adjusted to 2018 dollars, it would be $69,570 per illegal
immigrant, or $69.6 billion per million illegal immigrants.
This
net figure is based on estimates of the fiscal impact of immigrants by
education level developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine (NAS). My analysis takes the education level of illegal immigrants
and applies it to the lifetime net fiscal deficit, or fiscal surplus, created
by immigrants at each level of education. As we pointed out in the earlier
analysis, the cost of a deportation (technically referred as a removal) is much
less, averaging only about $6,000 to $11,000 per person.
The
reason illegal immigrants are unambiguously a net fiscal drain is that
less-educated people, native-born or immigrant, earn on average modest wages
and as a result they tend to make modest tax contributions, while needing
significant social services. As we pointed out in our prior study, research by
the Center for Immigration Studies, the Pew Research Center, the Heritage
Foundation, and others have all found that a very large share of illegal
immigrants have relatively few years of schooling — most have not completed
high school or have only a high school education. The fiscal drain illegal
immigrants create is not because they are all lazy and on welfare, nor it
simply because they often work off the books and don't pay taxes.
Rather
they tend to earn wages commensurate with their education levels and, as
result, they typically have low incomes on average, though there are individual
exceptions. Those with low incomes as a group, regardless of legal status, use
more in public services than they pay in taxes. It's why cities and states
worry so much about losing their middle- and upper-income tax base. It is
middle- and upper-income residents who pay most of the taxes, which does not
describe the average illegal immigrant.
As
we pointed out in our prior analysis, the above cost estimates do come with
some caveats. The NAS projects future fiscal impacts, so it provides a good
idea of the fiscal savings of keeping someone out to the country moving
forward. However, a significant share of the current illegal population are not
recent arrivals, so some of the net burden they create has already accrued. We
previously estimated that one-fifth of the average fiscal deficit the current
population of illegal immigrants creates has already been incurred by
taxpayers. This reduces somewhat the fiscal benefit of removing an existing
illegal immigrant, but the fiscal drain is still much larger than the average
cost of a removal.
A
second caveat is that the above cost estimates are only for the original illegal
immigrant, and exclude descendants. Using the NAS net cost estimates for the
descendants adds $18,112 (2018 dollars) to the net fiscal drain per immigrant.
A third caveat is that the estimate for deportation costs does not include the
costs of the immigration courts run by the Department of Justice. Dividing the
court's budget in 2016 by the number deportations in that year adds $1,864 to
the average cost of a removal or it adds $820 to the 2012 cost — in 2018
dollars.
Finally,
the NAS's long-term fiscal estimates by education use the concept of
"net present value" (NPV), which is commonly employed by economists.
This approach has the effect of reducing the size of the net fiscal drain that
unskilled immigrants create because costs or benefits years from now are valued
less relative to more immediate costs. If the NPV concept is not used, the
actual net lifetime fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is likely $125,000 to
$135,000 per illegal alien, or nearly twice the cost when the NPV concept is
employed.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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