Something that I don’t believe that most people realize is that a family can come into the United States illegally on Sunday and, in most if not all states, register their kids at a public school on Monday. In Illinois the average cost per elementary school student is about $12,000.
It is estimated that there are over 40,000 school age children in Illinois who have entered the U. S. illegally. That represents a cost of around a half billion per year that the state and local governments just can’t afford.
Illinois is strapped. We don’t have the money to sustain that sort of expense.
That family can also walk off the street and into an emergency room, present symptoms and receive appropriate tests, whatever the cost. Their ailment will be, at least stabilized. Upon release, they can re-admit themselves at will, indefinitely. Humane? Sure. Sustainable? Doubt it.
My point is not that we shouldn’t be educating the children of people who have entered the country illegally. It’s that those who don’t believe we should stiffen enforcement have a moral and intellectual responsibility to explain how they plan to pay for it in a little more detail than “taxing the rich” since we haven’t been very effective at doing that.
Note that Illinois is right around the national average. California is about the same as Illinois (with a lot more students); Alabama is lower; New York is much higher.
Do their parents somehow not spend money and pay sales taxes? Do landlords deduct illegal aliens from their property taxes?
If you’re going to look at the numbers, look at all the numbers.
I will confess that the studies on this are all over the place — some claimingnthat illegal aliens account for billions of dollars lost, others saying that they are a net benefit.
I’d also look at what percentage of the population are illegal aliens. Assuming that the rosiest and most four studies are all bunk, and with the percentage of illegal immigrants being relatively low… they’re just a rounding error in most budgets.
Two people working fulltime at minimum wage earn $32,960 gross income. Two children in school cost in the vicinity of $24,000.
How much do you think they pay in sales tax? Let’s say half their earnings are rent and the other half is spent on things eligible for sales tax. 8.64% X $16,480 = $1,423.87 If they’re sending money to the old country in the form of remittances, it’s less than that. Add, say, a thousand for their rent’s portion of real estate tax and you have a total of less then $2,500 in total taxes paid. On the expense side of the ledger add to school costs health care costs (as Gray Shambler noted), sewer and sanitation costs which are proportional to numbers, road repair (proportional to utilization), etc. In other words what’s barely a rounding error is the government revenue contributions of low skill illegal immigrants.
Since money is fungible, the couple of billion out of pocket being spent on behalf of illegal immigrants could be spent a lot of other ways. I’d rather be spending it on vocational training for kids on the South Side of Chicago and I would vote for that if I had the opportunity.
Maybe where you live that’s easily affordable but Illinois is broke. We even pay more for borrowing than any other state.
The numbers of illegals are real:
“About 800 employees of the main Cloverhill Bakery on the Northwest Side and the company’s bakeries in Cicero and Romeoville lost their jobs when the audit found many were hired after presenting fake or stolen IDs.”
“Those Hispanic employees didn’t return to work, leaving the bakery desperate to fill their jobs. So the company turned to another placement agency, Metro Staff Inc., and it provided Cloverhill with workers screened through the government’s “E-Verification†program. Most of those new employees are African America.”
“According to a former consultant to the bakery, MSI paid the black workers $14 an hour, versus the $10 an hour the Mexican workers were making through Labor Network.”
At major Northwest Side bakery, labor issues pit blacks vs. Hispanics
The black unemployment rate in Illinois is 9 percent.
So far as can be determined, net immigration is roughly zero, meaning the number of immigrants to the U.S. and the number of immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, is equivalent. That means aggregate costs are stable. If certain states or municipalities are having financial difficulty paying for educational services, then the federal government should take up the responsibility as it is federal policies creating the problem.
This brings up the topic of “what’s the income before I give more to the government then I get in benefits from the government”. The term is called fiscal incidence.
Tax foundation has good primer on the topic “https://taxfoundation.org/distribution-tax-and-spending-policies-united-states”.
Their conclusion is the break even point is around the 60th percentile by income, approximately 67k in family income. That is a reasonable estimate, since a somewhat progressive income tax, a somewhat progressive social safety net, and running deficits would tend to move the break even point above the 50 percentile in median income.
This isn’t an endorsement of thinking of immigration purely by money. But as a society it is good to be upfront about costs, so spending and taxing priorities are adjusted in a fair fashion.
That’s right but I’d add that the only way, repeat only way of controlling costs is scrutinizing prospective immigrants. If one is incontrovertibly opposed to scrutinizing immigrants on the grounds that no more can be done without a massive holocaust on our border, then you’re accepting certain costs and it’s prudent to understand the implications of doing that.
Net immigration would be zero if the number of emigrants from the United States equalled the number of immigrants “undocumented and otherwise”.
PD Shaw: Yep, a good example of how enforcement of the immigration laws benefits US CITIZENS instead of bottom-line profit margins only. The important thing now is that Cloverhill Bakeries’ competitors need to be subjected to the same enforcement level. Otherwise it’s selective justice/crony capitalism. Also, if the beginning wages are now $14/hr., it weakens the howling for a $15/hr. minimum wage, which BTW is more about raising the prevailing wage and thus contributions to union coffers than social justice. It’s hard to organize a kiosk.
That was a typo. Should have been “emigrants”
Raising wages in this manner isn’t sustainable, because a major social backlash is inevitable. You can’t get away with Operation Wetback any more. It’s unpopular and will only become more so.
So far as can be determined, net immigration is roughly zero, meaning the number of immigrants to the U.S. and the number of immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, is equivalent.
On reflection the whole thing was badly worded.
Net undocumented migration to the U.S. is either zero or slightly negative, so aggregate costs are stable. If states and municipalities are experiencing difficulty with the financial burden then the federal government should absorb the costs, as it is federal policies creating the problem.
” prevailing wage and thus contributions to union coffers than social justice.”
Only about 7% of private employees are in unions.
Also, not all immigrants have two children of school age. For your argument that immigrants are a net cost, others argue that they are a net positive, in which case Illinois cannot afford to not have immigrants. You are much more certain about the costs vs benefits than I am.
Steve
Do you have evidence to support that, Ben? I’m not being snarky. I’d like to know. My understanding is that in 2017 after a lengthy period of stability illegal immigration began rising again.
People being apprehended seems to be down but I’m not convinced that’s a good indicator.
There are people who believe the world is flat, too. That doesn’t make it a credible argument. I suggest that you noodle around with the numbers for yourself. I don’t think there’s any way that illegals produce net revenue for state and local governments but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. It could even be worse than my back of the envelope calculations suggest. For example, if enough illegal immigrants are earning below the minimum wage.
I think it’s possible that illegals are a net positive for the Social Security system if there’s enough fraud, but that’s not state and local governments which bear most of the costs.
Keep in mind that Illinois is a very specific case. We have special problems.
My immediate source is Pew Research:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/
Yes, that’s what I thought. Their estimates end in 2016. The uptick began in 2017. But that’s a legitimately good effort and a good source.
The illegal immigrant numbers don’t matter, because they are not trivially small. Ben and Steve are making meaningless red herring arguments. Any illegal immigrants represent a net cost, in both lower wages to US citizens and in public services costs.
Substandard wage growth is supposedly an issue, most vociferously made by Democrats. And last time I looked most government entities were not particularly financially sound. But apparently those concerns get suspended when the issue is illegals. The reasons should be obvious to serious people.
Over time I have gravitated to Daves view that we should provide for a number of immigrants through legal means in a number that alleviates the jobs-Americans-won’t-do issue. I’m much more dubious about asylum. We are not the worlds warehouse for legitimate or illegitimate claimants living in despotic regimes. Again, I don’t see CofC Republicans or just about all Democrats giving a whit about immigrants. It’s money and votes.
FYI the reason I’m still a reader of this site is because you aren’t intentionally snarky.
There are about 11 million illegals, with about 1 million of those kids. Suppose they are all in school at $12,000 per year. (Unlikely but go with it.) That would mean $12 billion per year in school costs. So how many of those 10 million who aren’t kids are working? Estimates vary widely, but let’s go with it being the same as the black UE rate which seems to be a fairly common assumption. Let’s say 10%. That leaves 9 million working, which at your $2,500 number, gives us about $22 billion. Nope, we didn’t add in the medical costs and other stuff, but we know they can’t get Medicaid and Hispanics are generally healthy. We also know that not all of those kids are going to school. Finally, an awful lot leave to go to their home country to retire. So they are less likely to be a drag after they retire.
These are really rough numbers, but it looks as though illegal aliens could be net positive just looking at state and local revenues and expenditures, but it probably varies a bit from state to state. I don’t this is as obvious as you seem to think it is. (i have listed below programs of which illegals are not eligible.)
Children’s Health Insurance (CHIP)
Disability, aka Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
Food stamps, aka The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
Health insurance, aka insurance via the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
Medicaid
Medicare
Social Security
Welfare
Steve
That’s actually reassuring, steve, and assuages my concerns somewhat. There are still two sticking points.
First, since 2014 the number of children coming across the border has risen sharply. In other words that 10% no longer holds for new arrivals. What is the percentage of children now? I don’t know.
Second, the pattern of settlement of these immigrants isn’t evenly distributed throughout the country. In fact just six states account for most of them, one of which is Illinois. Believe me, here in Chicago we’re not making money from an influx of illegals.
Based on the data from a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the lifetime net cost (services used less taxes paid) of each individual crossing the border illegally is around $75,000. When their U. S.-born children are included that rises to around $94,000. I don’t think that’s insignificant.
I did research on this a few years ago and what I remember is that solid numbers are hard to come by and analysis is easy to spin. So you get a pro-immigration group say that immigrants are less of a burden than the native born while immigration control groups say that immigrant poverty and assistance rates are twice the native born.
It all depends on who you count an how:
– households vs individuals. Particularly relevant for household that have immigrant adults and American born children, pretty common among illegals families that have been here for some time. So while it is technically true that illegals cannot get many benefits, households with citizen children can.
– What immigrants do you include? Legal vs illegal.
– Benefits vary a lot by state. California, for example, spends a lot more on immigrants, including illegals, than other states. And, it’s complicated when it comes to households with citizens and illegals.
– Estimating number for things like taxes paid by illegals is hard, especially when so many work in the gray economy.
Overall I found the analyses that illegal immigrants are a net drain on state coffers were more convincing. And for uneducated legal immigrants, who do have access to more benefits, the data is incontrovertible.
Which is why I cited the National Academy of Science in my comment.
I did the same as Andy a while back. What I think I found was that legal immigrants are probably more of a drain since they are eligible of lots of govt programs. Illegals are probably a wash, maybe positive. Few illegals bring kids. They are eligible for many govt programs. Historically, most traveled back and forth. Of course that was old data. With all of the border patrols it is risky going back so more people just stay.
Steve