Research: Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Would Cost U.S. Taxpayers $2 Trillion

Giving amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens living across the United States will cost American taxpayers about $2 trillion, a researcher predicts.

Princeton Policy Adviser President Steven Kopits says in his latest research on illegal immigration that handing over amnesty to illegal aliens would come with a “steep” price tag for American taxpayers.

Kopits notes that if illegal aliens are given amnesty, they will “sooner or later” become “eligible for government programs.”

Although not many illegal aliens have reached retirement age yet, Kopits predicts that by 2025 and into the 2030s, more and more illegal aliens will become eligible for taxpayer-funded retirement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

In Social Security benefits, amnestied illegal aliens could receive at least $6,000 a year in benefits, though Kopits says this represents “the lower end of what politicians’ magnanimity is likely to deliver.”

Additionally, those amnestied illegal aliens could also receive about $10,000 a year in Medicare benefits. These benefits, plus the Social Security payouts, would amount to a $2 trillion cost to American taxpayers over the course of a lifetime, Kopits estimates.

“…It will be an expensive proposition,” Kopits says of the amnesty in his report.

Amnesty, although beneficial to illegal aliens, comes at the expense of American citizens. For the nearly 800,000 to 3.5 million illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, granting an amnesty would cost taxpayers at least $26 billion.

Additionally, about one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated.

Any plan to give amnesty to DACA illegal aliens that does not also include provisions to halve legal immigration levels — the U.S. admits more than one million legal immigrants a year at the expense of America’s working and middle class — would give amnestied illegal aliens the opportunity to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.