THE HIGH COST OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

(A friend, a fellow Vietnam Veteran, a combat shot down flier and a fellow Confederate patriot who is the author of many books of which the latest is Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You BT.)

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Mike Scruggs

According to the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), there are 13 million illegal immigrants in the United States, and the fiscal burden on federal, state, and local taxpayers is $113 billion per year. This figure is generally agreed upon by other non-partisan national research organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, and the Heritage Foundation. In fact, the number may be cautiously conservative and does not include other more substantial economic costs to American workers and families.

Only about half of the 8.4 million illegal workers in the U.S. pay any taxes. At least 80 percent of these use fraudulent or stolen social security numbers. The other half are in the underground economy. Those are the people you see at the grocery buying loads of groceries for large wads of cash paid to them by their illegal immigration enabling employers. Federal and state governments collect less than 30 percent of the taxes that would apply to legal workers. The total federal and state recovery is estimated to be about $13 billion dollars, leaving the nation’s net fiscal costs for illegal immigration at an even $100 billion per year.

Only $29 billion of this annual taxpayer burden falls on the federal government. Seventy-four percent of the burden, $84.2 billion, falls on state and local governments and their taxpayers. Yet the Obama government is deliberately impeding any resistance to illegal immigration by state and local governments, many of which have been thrown into economic crisis by massive illegal immigration.

The total fiscal impact of federal, state, and local taxes is about $1, 117 per native U. S. household per year. Many states are carrying a far heavier burden. California has a $14.4 billion deficit for this fiscal year, yet illegal immigration is costing the state $21.8 billion per year. How soon will it be before American taxpayers are asked to bail out California? Arizona has an $8.5 billion 2011 budget with a potential deficit of $3.1 billion, but illegal immigration is costing state taxpayers $2.6 billion per year. North Carolina has a 2011 budget of $18.9 billion and is facing a budget deficit of approximately $1.0 billion, but illegal immigration is costing North Carolina taxpayers $2.1 billion per year. South Carolina has a $5.0 billion budget and is facing a budget deficit of $455 million but is spending $369 million per year to support illegal immigrant education, medical care, and criminal prosecutions.

The lion’s share of illegal immigration costs is in educating the children of illegal immigrants, where the tab is now running at an estimated $52 billion per year. The vast majority of these costs are being borne by state and local government taxpayers. Actual costs may be higher because of the greater difficulty associated with teaching students who begin school speaking English as a second language. This also diverts attention away from other students and results in declining overall academic performance. This already crushing millstone is growing almost uncontrollably because of illegal immigration and is being further accelerated by U.S. birthright citizenship policy. An estimated 350 thousand children of illegal immigrants enter U.S. public schools every year. As these move through grades K through 12, the burden on our public schools steadily increases. The taxpayer strain is rapidly becoming unbearable. In the face of their own immigration problems, all European countries have abandoned such policies.

Other substantial illegal immigration burdens are in medical care, especially unreimbursed medical expenses, general welfare, and increased law enforcement costs. It is nearly impossible to estimate the cost of illegal alien crime, but a FAIR study indicated the illegal alien criminal incarceration rate was 45 percent higher than the native population.

The “court economists” of the cheap labor lobbies (analogous to the “court prophets” of the Old Testament) tell us that illegal immigrants actually benefit the economy. I hope most intelligent and informed voters can see through this self-serving and absurd claim. Most illegal immigrants are unskilled and 36 percent of them have less than a high school education. Skilled immigrants add to the economy as long as they do not displace American skilled workers, and unskilled immigrants and natives generally receive more government benefits than taxes paid. We already have too many unskilled and poorly educated potential workers.

The fiscal costs of illegal immigration are high, but the economic impact of importing cheap labor to replace American workers is even higher. Even in 2000, Harvard labor economist George Borjas estimated that cheap illegal immigrant labor had driven down American wages by $1,500 per worker per year. Multiply that by 141 million American workers, and you get an annual $211 billion cost to American workers and the economy. Furthermore, the number of illegal immigrants has nearly doubled since then.

According to several academic studies posted on the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) website, for every 100 illegal immigrants hired, approximately 65 American workers are displaced. The cumulative displacement since the 1986 amnesty must then be about 5.7 million workers. How is it that with 15 million unemployed Americans, we still have 8.4 million illegal immigrant workers, and the Obama government will not enforce immigration laws at the employer level?
According to CIS, the ongoing recession has caused the number of illegal immigrants in the country to drop to about 10.8 million. This is proof that cutting off the employment faucet by enforcing our immigration laws would send most of them home at their own expense. But first we must throw the politicians that enable the employment of illegal aliens out of office.