Illegal immigration costs United States taxpayers roughly $116 billion a year, enough to pay for the cost of a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border nearly eight times, according to an new report.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) released the immigration report, revealing that an illegal alien costs the American taxpayer approximately $8,075 each, totaling a burden of roughly $116 billion annually.
Researchers with FAIR said the finding was both a “disturbing and unsustainable trend,” as the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers has risen nearly $3 billion since 2013, when illegal immigration cost $113 billion.
The study directly challenges research by libertarian think tanks and open borders organizations, which claim that illegal immigrants are net-gains for American taxpayers.
“A continually growing population of illegal aliens, along with the federal government’s ineffective efforts to secure our borders, present significant national security and public safety threats to the United States,” the FAIR report states. “They also have a severely negative impact on the nation’s taxpayers at the local, state, and national levels. Illegal immigration costs Americans billions of dollars each year. Illegal aliens are net consumers of taxpayer-funded services and the limited taxes paid by some segments of the illegal alien population are, in no way, significant enough to offset the growing financial burdens imposed on U.S. taxpayers by massive numbers of uninvited guests.”
Every year, the federal government shells out approximately $45.8 billion in costs on illegal aliens and their children – including expenditures for public education, health care, justice enforcement initiatives and welfare programs.
“FAIR maintains that every concerned American citizen should be asking our government why, in a time of increasing costs and shrinking resources, is it spending such large amounts of money on individuals who have no right, nor authorization, to be in the United States,” FAIR researchers ask. “This is an especially important question in view of the fact that the illegal alien beneficiaries of American taxpayer largess offset very little of the enormous costs of their presence by the payment of taxes. Meanwhile, average Americans pay approximately 30% of their income in taxes.”
Meanwhile, state and local costs of illegal aliens totaling nearly $89 billion a year, FAIR estimates, which includes their tax drain on public schools, city and county infrastructure, as well as local courts and prisons.
For the total amount that illegal aliens cost American taxpayers, the U.S. could have funded a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border nearly eight times, as the a previous estimated by FAIR estimates the wall would cost approximately $15 billion, a small fraction of the $116 billion illegal immigration burden.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.