Why illegal immigration is a ‘local battle’, that must be fought from city to city, town to town, street by street?
Executive Summary
Numerous studies have documented the fact that illegal immigrants are a significant fiscal burden on local communities. Because the burden is related to the low wages earned by this population and that is unlikely to change as long as the earnings do not rise more than inflation, any Congressional amnesty-type action that incorporates these foreign workers and allows or admits additional ones will not only perpetuate the fiscal burden, it will increase it.
FAIR estimates the current local annual costs of illegal immigration from just three program areas — educating the children in public primary and secondary schools, providing medical services in emergency rooms, and incarceration — amount to about $36 billion. If the population of foreign low wage workers is allowed to increase as a result of not effectively denying new illegal immigrants access American jobs, current illegal immigrants are allowed to stay and bring their relatives to join them, and additional low wage workers are allowed into the country in a new guest worker program the costs to local communities will increase. Our estimate is that the annual fiscal costs in 2010 would increase by nearly 70 percent to $61.5 billion for just these same three program areas. The amount would swell by an additional nearly 73 percent to $106.3 billion by 2020.
Background
All major studies of the impact of illegal immigration on local communities have come to the conclusion that there is a major fiscal cost to the local taxpayers. Recognition of these costs led several states in the 1990s to sue the federal government for compensation to defray the costs for local taxpayers. The suits failed because the federal courts declared this to be an issue that the Legislative Branch would have to settle.
Congress subsequently recognized the heavy local costs of illegal immigration by adopting programs to compensate some of the costs of emergency medical care and for incarceration of illegal immigrants. In addition, there are federal programs that help local communities bear the heavy costs of public education, especially for limited English speakers. However, none of these programs begin to approach the level of expenditure that is borne by local taxpayers.
Studies of these costs were done in the 1990s by the Urban Institute1 and by Dr. Donald Huddle,2 a Rice University economics professor. Both studies found major net costs — after subtracting for taxes collected — associated with illegal immigration. In 1996 the National Academies of Science issued a report titled “The New Americans,” that studied the economic and fiscal impact of immigration — they did not differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants. That study found that, “In the short term, today’s immigrants impose costs on some state and local governments by using more in government servi
| Comments:| | Nolan 
How about a little American culture sensitivity. Memorial Day is coming... We should line Cherry Ln & WS Rd with American Flags in support of Our Troops & their families. Or at least force the used car lot in front of Veterans Park to take down their Mexican flag, and any other businesses take down any other National Flags, other than AMERICAN FLAGS.............
 20.05.07 19:25 illegal immigration
In the past two years, FAIR has issued fiscal cost studies for California, Arizona, Texas and Florida looking at the same cost factors studied by the Urban Institute 10 years earlier, i.e., education3, emergency medical care and incarceration. Our findings of the annual net fiscal costs were:
California $8.8 billion ($1,183 per native household)
Arizona
$1.03 billion ($717 per native household)
Texas
$3.73 billion ($725 per native household)
Florida4 $.91 billion ($315 per native household)
These studies were done in 2004 and 2005, and the rapid continuing increase in the illegal immigrant population in each of these states would result in higher estimates of the fiscal cost today.
20.05.07 07:10 illegal immigration
That study found that, “In the short term, today’s immigrants impose costs on some state and local governments by using more in government services than they pay in taxes… In some states, this burden can be substantial: In California, for example, the panel calculates an additional annual tax burden of $1,178 per household headed by a U.S. native.”
20.05.07 07:10 |
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