Economic and social costs of illegal immigration
The economic and social consequences of illegal immigration across the 1,940 mile long America-Mexico border are staggering.
An average of 10,000 illegal aliens cross the border every day - over 3 million per year. A third will be caught and many of them immediately will try again. About half of those remaining will become permanent U.S. residents (3,500 per day).
Currently there are an estimated 9 to 11 million illegals in the U.S., double the 1994 level. A quarter-million illegal aliens from the Middle-east currently live in the U.S, and a growing number are entering by crossing the Mexican border.
FAIR research suggests that "between 40 and 50 percent of wage-loss among low-skilled Americans is due to the immigration of low-skilled workers. Some native workers lose not just wages but their jobs through immigrant competition. An estimated 1,880,000 American workers are displaced from their jobs every year by immigration; the cost for providing welfare and assistance to these Americans is over $15 billion a year." The National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, found in 1997 that the average immigrant without a high school education imposes a net fiscal burden on public coffers of $89,000 during the course of his or her lifetime. The average immigrant with only a high school education creates a lifetime fiscal burden of $31,000.8
80% of cocaine and 50% of heroin in the U.S. is smuggled across the border by Mexican nationals. Drug cartels spend a half-billion dollars per year bribing Mexico's corrupt generals and police officials, and armed confrontations between the Mexican army and U.S. Border Patrol agents are a real threat. There have been 118 documented incursions by the Mexican military over the last five years.
Illegal aliens have cost billions of taxpayer-funded dollars for medical services. Dozens of hospitals in Texas, New Mexico Arizona, and California, have been forced to close or face bankruptcy because of federally-mandated programs requiring free emergency room services to illegal aliens. Taxpayers pay half-a-billion dollars per year incarcerating illegal alien criminals.
Immigration is a net drain on the economy; corporate interests reap the benefits of cheap labor, while taxpayers pay the infrastructural cost. FAIR research shows "the net annual cost of immigration has been estimated at between $67 and $87 billion a year. The National Academy of Sciences found that the net fiscal drain on American taxpayers is between $166 and $226 a year per native household. Even studies claiming some modest overall gain for the economy from immigration ($1 to $10 billion a year) have found that it is outweighed by the fiscal cost ($15 to $20 billion a year) to native taxpayers."
"In the NAFTA era, a staggering 87 percent of Mexico's imports go to the United States, while Mexicans living in the United States send home more than $8 billion annually. Fox has said he considers his constituency to include the 22 million to 24 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States. Mexican candidates now make campaign stops in U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Fresno, Calif." (Mexico's muddle, Ruben Navarrette Jr., March 26, 2003)
For more information, see The Washington Times article and series Chaos along the border, October 6, 2002, the FAIR reports Immigration and the Economy, Immigration Lowers Wages for American Workers, and the article Record amount of remittances sent from US to Mexico.
Remittances
$60 billion dollars are earned by illegal aliens in the U.S. each year. One of Mexico's largest revenue streams (after exports and oil sales) consists of money sent home by legal immigrants and illegal aliens working in the U.S. Economists say this will help Mexico reduce its $17.8 billion defecit and may bolster the peso. $10 billion dollars (as of 2003) are sent back to Mexico annually, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, reported in an Associated Press article, up $800 million from the previous year. ($9 billion dollars were previously sent back annually, according to a September 25, 2002 NPR report). That figure equals what Mexico earns annually from tourism. This is a massive transfer of wealth from America - essentially from America's displaced working poor - to Mexico.
A May 28, 2004 study by Bendixen & Associates6 found that legal and illegal immigrants send a total of $30 billion to their home countries on an annual basis. Mexico receives $13.3 billion a year. The largest amount in remittances ($9.6 billion) is sent from California, followed by New York ($3.6 billion), Texas ($3.2 billion) and Florida ($2.5 billion). Of those surveyed by the study, 24% were Latin American-born U.S. citizens, 39% were legal residents, and 32% were illegal aliens. Sixty-one per cent of those surveyed send remittances overseas at least once a month. A typical remittance is between $150 and $250. (See this state-by-state map of remittances.)
Education costs
The total K-12 school expenditure for illegal immigrants costs the states $7.4 billion annually—enough to buy a computer for every junior high student nationwide.9
For more information, see CAIR's education section.
http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html
