Sanctuary cities are money pits for taxpayers — who knew? Care of illegal aliens is costing cities — and thus local taxpayers—across the country billions of dollars.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) recently whined about having to care for too many illegals being bused from Texas, and New York City is also struggling. New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) angrily noted in April that the illegal migrant crisis has “destroyed” NYC. Ironically, both New York City and Chicago are or were sanctuary cities, run by radical Democrats. It turns out woke emotionalism gets very expensive to maintain. And who has to pay the most for it? Taxpaying citizens, of course. That’s the Biden border crisis.
Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) explained last week how illegal migrants are costing municipalities up to $451 billion yearly. That’s obscene. You can read his detailed computations, but I want to highlight a few key points. Remember too that there are tens of thousands of criminals and potential terrorists crossing illegally into the U.S. But, criminal or not, why should Americans who are already struggling in a bad economy pay billions of dollars a year for these non-citizens who are only here because they violated our laws?
Arthur made several estimates, one based on the NYC comptroller’s March report for money estimates and official statistics of illegal migrants for the number of individuals being paid for. If “got-aways,” or illegals who evade Border Patrol, and releases are included, municipal costs for single adults alone are $521,397,090 daily, “or a yearly total of $190,309,937,850,” Arthur estimated. That doesn’t include migrant families, which cost an estimated $89,378,706 per day, Arthur said.
Arthur then made a very conservative estimate of annual costs if not all migrants need the funding for an entire year:
If you assume that 30 percent of family migrants and 75 percent of the single adults don’t require care and housing, that brings the daily cost for families down to $89,378,706 ($32,623,227,690 per annum) and the adult costs down to $44,839,466 ($16,366,405,090 per annum), for a total per annum cost of $48,989,632,780. If they go to some place where the cost of living is 30 percent cheaper than New York, that cost drops to $34,292,742,946.
This does not include costs for education, hospitalization, or unaccompanied alien children (UACs). Meanwhile, the federal government is making what Arthur calls a “paltry contribution,” offsetting a mere “2.3 percent of… municipal costs,” at a hopeful estimate.
Using another estimate from RealClearInvestigations as the basis, Arthur noted municipal costs could be $451 billion annually.
Whether the total costs to cities and towns for caring for migrants is $451 billion or my most conservative estimate of more than $34 billion, it’s a lot of money for municipalities that are already trying to figure out how to pay for ordinary, day-to-day services and infrastructure for the non-“newly arrived”.
”A lot” is a major understatement. How is this sustainable? Illegal migration is set to spike with the end of Title 42, not improve, which will only mean billions more dollars extorted from American taxpayers to fund the Biden border crisis.
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