Report claims $135 billion in taxpayer funds spent on illegal immigrants each year
A recent report out from the Federation for American Immigration Reform reveals the growing fiscal consequences of U.S. failures to decrease the number of illegal immigrants burdening the nation’s stretched education, healthcare and social welfare coffers.
Though illegal immigrants pay about $19 billion in combined federal, state and local taxes, the amount of money the government brings in is far outpaced by what it spends on the illegal population.
From the report:
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. That amounts to a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664. The total cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling. In 2013, FAIR estimated the total cost to be approximately $113 billion. So, in under four years, the cost has risen nearly $3 billion.
State governments are hardest hit by the illegal immigration problem because most of the taxes payed by illegal immigrants end up in federal coffers even as states bear most of the burden of caring for the immigrants.
From FAIR:
The combined total of state and local government general expenditures on illegal aliens is $18,571,428,571 billion. The services referenced in this section are supported directly by the payment of city and state taxes and related fees. At the state level, examples of general expenditures would be the costs of general governance, fire departments, garbage collection, street cleaning and maintenance, etc. The state, county or municipality — or even a special taxing district in some situations — may provide some of these services. In most cases, localities offer more services than the state. By FAIR’s estimate, there is approximately a 65 percent to 35 percent cost share between local and state governments.
Here’s a helpful breakdown of government spending and receipts on illegal aliens provided in the report:
Full report is available here:
https://personalliberty.com/report-claims-135-billion-taxpayer-funds-spent-illegal-immigrants-year/
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I like the fact that this takes into consideration the argument that they pay taxes.
Excellent article. I think a federal tax increase on people in sanctuary cities could help pay for this.
Me too!
Could also look at taking some of that money from the salaries of the government "officials" that operate these sanctuary cities.
Hit them in their wallets and things may come around faster.
So do I and the fact is most of them wouldn't pay any taxes, but receive "Earned Income Tax Refunds" as it seems they are more family oriented.
Most I have met or know are hard working, something I can appreciate, but when you sit behind two school buses and watch them empty with approximately 100 young students, who are met by their mothers, who are pregnant and standing in front of baby carriages, you realize they aren't thinking of the welfare of the country, but their own welfare.
Wonder what the numbers are for disabled Americans or the hundreds of thousands of deadbeats that game the system year after year?
I wonder what on earth that comment has to do with an article on illegal immigrants? Are you trying to say the cost is just another drop in the bucket due to other programs that piss money away? I'm sure national debt probably doesn't concern you then, and won't, until we can't borrow any more money. Who put in place and oversees the programs causing the other abuse you speak of?
I'll bet a lot of those disabled persons you are speaking of are veterans who became disabled fighting to protect your right to disparage them.
You sound bitter. Do you equate disabled veterans with illegal aliens? Please explain your convoluted logic...
I have nothing against disabled people especially veterans. In fact I work with disabled veterans that's why I brought it up, Most people probably have no idea what we spend on disabled people in this country.
I have little doubt its as much or more than we spend on immigration and dead beats just suck off the system and probably cost us as much or more as either of the two other catagories.
I am bitter that our government wants to cut taxes for the ones that can pay them and then as I see it they will need to also start cutting how much we help disabled people and the poor.
Logicly you can not reduces income and not reduces out flow as well. We have may disabled and poor who will en u p suffering even more, bet on iot.
with trump its all about the money, more money for those who already have it , hopefully they will provide the means for everyone else to get in on it, Trickle down.... But trickle down doesn't trickle down much because of greed at the top. watch for huge tax breaks and very little of it going anywhere except into off shore accounts just like the last two times.
This is just another trick from trump to get people to approve of his ridiculous math.
Durn, Now I'm stumped!
I can't figure out if I should be filing this report under, "Haters gonna Hate" or under Mark Twain's "Figures don't lie, but liars figure"!?
September 29, 2017 1:08PM
FAIR’s “Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration” Study Is Fatally Flawed
By Alex Nowrasteh
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is devoted to reducing legal and illegal immigration. Its recent report, “The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2017)” by Matthew O’Brien, Spencer Raley, and Jack Martin, estimates that the net fiscal costs of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is $116 billion. FAIR’s report reaches that conclusion by vastly overstating the costs of illegal immigration, undercounting the tax revenue they generate, inflating the number of illegal immigrants, counting millions of U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, and by concocting a method of estimating the fiscal costs that is rejected by all economists who work on this subject.
FAIR’s Errors
Merely using the correct numbers when it comes to the actual size of the illegal immigrant population, the correct tax rates, and the effect of immigrants on property values lowers the net fiscal cost by 87 percent to 97 percent, down to $15.6 billion or $3.3 billion, respectively. Below is a list of FAIR’s errors and how the correct numbers affect the results:
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Merely using the actual numbers in a correct way reduces FAIR’s estimates fiscal cost of illegal immigrants from $116 billion to $3.3 to $15.6 billion – and that doesn’t even touch their flawed static approach to counting how illegal immigrants impact the economy.
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Based on the age of arrival and education, immigrants with less than a high school degree who entered before their 24 th birthday pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Illegal immigrants are potentially even better for public budgets in the short run because their consumption of government benefits is more curtailed than their tax payments (including the incidence of taxation) due to their legal status. Illegal immigrants do not likely consume more in tax benefits than they pay in taxes but, if they do, the figure is small.
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Conclusion
FAIR’s report argues for increased immigration restrictions as a way to address the federal budget deficit. However, it relies on poor methodology and contains numerous errors that undermine its credibility. Many years ago, I wrote a criticism of an earlier version this report by FAIR. It’s disheartening to see that this later version written by different authors is even more sloppy and makes more errors than the older version. The immigration debate deserves higher quality research than this recent FAIR report.
Oh well, guess I'll just file the FAIR report under background noise to be ignored until the time comes that lawmakers start trying to legislate based on such faulty crap.
So....I have little confidence in this being an unbiased report!