Is illegal immigration as profitable as open-border advocates claim it to be? Well according to a new study released this week by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), serving as the host for 12.5 million illegal aliens cost our federal, state and local taxpayers, up to $116 billion annually. The study reveals the contributing factors driving the high costs of illegal immigration, and compares them to the revenue generated from immigrants at state and local levels.
FAIR’s study claims that illegal immigrants pay $19 billion annually in combined federal, state and local taxes, that is seven times less than the $135 billion that the country puts in to accommodate them, leaving a $116 billion net deficit.
State and local taxpayers cover most of this expense, with $89 billion, coming directly from their pockets, in what the study considers a considerable fail on the federal government’s responsibility to secure U.S. borders every time they pay school taxes, local tolls, sales and excise taxes, with this claiming that illegal immigrants get a lot of benefits that they don’t pay for.
The study also claims that conversely in a 5-to-1 ratio, the taxes paid by illegal aliens wind up unjustly in federal coffers, when it is the states that bear most of the costs associated with illegal immigration.
The study claims that cities like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois and Virginia are all popular destinations for immigrants because of the availability of welfare programs, with Illinois and Maryland going as far as to allow them to obtain drivers licenses.
FAIR also claims that the state and local costs of illegal migration are magnified by the consignment of illegal immigrants earnings to their home nations, stating that 20% of an average illegal immigrant household income is remitted back to their country of origin, coming up to $7,200 per illegal immigrant household that is not spent in the United States.
These studies refute the argument that the presence of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is justified because they pay taxes and that there is a net positivity on the country’s economy because of it. The study claims that the immigrants pay only a fraction of the services they consume and that the American taxpayers are left with the fiscal burden of the liberal policies that protect them.
FAIR has also claimed that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is at 12.5 million. This is based on the same criteria used by the Pew Research but counting as well the beneficiaries of programs like Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood of Arrivals who are allegedly left out of PEW’s census.
It’s worth noting though that the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t view FAIR like a credible source.
FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group’s main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a “mistake.”
As read in the Southern Poverty Law Center webpage.
