Illegal immigration is costing taxpayers $151 billion every year — a 30% increase since 2017.
“The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2023,” a report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), concludes that taxpayers spend $182 billion annually on illegal immigrants. That number is partially offset by illegal aliens paying $31 billion in taxes. FAIR estimates that tax revenue is collected from 15.5 million illegal aliens — far more than the government’s 11.3 million estimated illegal alien numbers, which are based on population surveys.
The cost to taxpayers supporting 11-15 million people who refused to go through the legal process of crossing the border and applying for a green card that would allow them to work in the U.S. isn’t really the point. It’s the loss of sovereignty. Every other nation on earth is allowed to determine who gets in and who stays out. Why America has to be different in this regard is a mystery.
While illegal immigrants are not eligible for the majority of federal welfare programs, the study also takes into account services, such as education and food assistance programs, provided to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants and also programs that they may be eligible for at the state level.
The largest cost that FAIR identifies is K-12 education, which the group estimates costs a total of $78 billion a year. Health care – including uncompensated hospital expenditures, Medicaid fraud and Medicaid for U.S. born children – is estimated to cost $42.7 billion a year. Costs related to criminal justice at the federal, state and local levels, which includes federal immigration enforcement, are estimated at approximately $47 billion a year.
“As America struggles to meet countless societal needs while facing the realities of our staggering $31 trillion national debt, the costs of providing for millions of people who have no legal right to be in the United States continues to grow at an alarming rate,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in a statement.
Adding $151 billion to a $31 trillion national debt is immaterial. It’s the drain on resources — criminal justice, healthcare, and education — that matters. This is especially true since the costs of illegal immigration varies from state to state.
California spends $31 billion on illegals — far and away the most of any state. The cost to Texas is $12 billion, largely because the state doesn’t dole out benefits to illegals that encourage more of the same.
The authors note that it is difficult to get a clear picture of the illegal immigrant population, given many sources rely on self-reported data and many such immigrants are reluctant to reveal information to avoid discovery by authorities. The report also faults a lack of transparency from government agencies when it comes to data on the subject. As a result, estimates of not only costs but also how many illegal immigrants are in the U.S. overall, have varied wildly depending on the group. Groups that have called for looser immigration restrictions have challenged FAIR’s previous studies.
The report comes as the U.S. is still being wracked by a historic migrant crisis that saw more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in FY 2021 and more than 2.3 million in FY 2022. FY 2023 has so far eclipsed the numbers from the prior year, although the Biden administration has linked a sharp drop in numbers between December and January to policies it rolled out in early January.
The Biden administration — much to the chagrin of their open-borders fanatics — has finally decided to crack down on asylum seekers. There will be no asylum for people who show up at our border without permission if they transit through a third country. This is a monumental reversal of policy that has enraged radical Democrats in Congress. Whether it will survive a court challenge remains to be seen.
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