April 11, 2008

The Cost of Immigration

Two complete 24-hour news cycles after the release of a groundbreaking study that calculates the cost to the American taxpayer of immigration - legal and illegal - at $346 billion annually, the Associated Press bureau in Nashville published a story ignoring those numbers while spotlighting the estimated $9 billion in additional revenue collected by Social Security on wages paid to illegals.

$9 billion in additional revenue from illegals hardly pays for $346 billion in added costs to taxpayers from immigrants, of whom an estimated one third are illegals. Even discounting the $346 billion figure by two thirds, we're still left with $115 billion in additional costs compared to $9 billion in additional revenue.

Illegals do not, as the Tennessean headline over the AP story asserts, "help carry the tax burden." They make the tax burden worse, and barely pay a fraction of it.

Here's a section of the Washington Times story on the comprehensive study of the cost of immigration to the American taxpayer:

This is another nail in the coffin of economic growth," said Edwin Rubenstein, director of research and president of ESR Research, which released the report. "There is absolutely no reason immigration policy shouldn't be discussed on its economic merits."

Mr. Rubenstein, a former director of research at the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization, said U.S. taxpayers paid more than $9,000 for each immigrant in the country, a third of whom are believed to be in the U.S. illegally.

The report, which analyzed costs based on 15 separate federal agencies, estimated that the departmental impacts ranged from a high of $146 billion at the Treasury Department to a low of $300 million at the Defense Department.

The loss estimates, the report said, included $100 billion in federal taxes lost "from the reduction of native incomes caused by immigrant workers."

While a total of 15 federal departments were examined in terms of the fiscal impact of immigration, Mr. Rubenstein said the federal budgets never provided a comprehensive analysis to the public.

And even programs that are not usually associated with immigration, he said, have actually added financial burdens to the taxpayers.

For example, Mr Rubenstein said the Bureau of Land Management, a unit of the Interior Department, spends millions of dollars to clean the trash left behind by illegal immigrants crossing the Southern border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Tennessee's budget deficit so far this year: $268.1 million and rising.