Not if you consider what they’re costing us. Read on.
Last month the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a report stating that each of the 11 million illegals the Obama Administration says is in the US pays an average of $1,050 in income, excise and sales taxes each year so, (in a paragraph spilling over with moralisms) they are a net positive to the economy.
Shazam (as Gomer used to say) illegal aliens are paying taxes — we’re good!
Not so fast. We know what they’re contributing but, what are they costing us?
The PEW Center says 6.9% of all K-12 public school students are children of illegal aliens. The Department of Education says there are 50.1 million K-12 public school students. That means there are 3,457,000 children of illegal aliens in our public schools.
National Public Radio reports we spend on average $10,615 each year on each K-12 public school student.
How many illegal aliens visit emergency rooms each year? We don’t know, the Obama Administration won’t tell us, in fact, Federal law makes it illegal for emergency room staff to ask whether a patient is an illegal alien. However, the American College of Emergency Room Physicians will tell us what they cost: “Many hospitals are concerned that the U.S. government will cut money — about $20 billion annually — used to pay for emergency care for undocumented immigrants — mostly in poor urban and rural areas. The health care law will eventually cut that money by half because of the anticipation that fewer people will lack insurance after the law is implemented. “ http://newsroom.acep.org/fact_sheets?...
$20 billion, $1,233 per visit, according to the ACERP and Blue Cross and, this doesn’t include state or local expenditures or costs for which hospitals are never compensated and must recoup from other patients.
The Department of Homeland Security has refused to release illegal alien prisoner statistics for the last 5 years but, in 2010 DHS said on an average day there were more than 300,000 illegal aliens incarcerated in State and County prisons and jails and, on an average day there were another 73,000 incarcerated in Federal prisons. (Bush Administration estimates were 100,000 higher. Are there fewer illegal alien criminals now or, are the Obama Administration’s numbers wrong or, are we just letting them go?)
The Vera Institute says the (39 state) average cost of incarcerating a prisoner is $31,286 per year.
So, illegals pay $11.6 billion in total taxes but, what do they cost?
Multiply the children of illegal aliens in the public schools (3,457,000) by the average cost per student ($10,615) and you get $36.7 billion.
Multiply the minimum number of illegal aliens in prison (373,000) by the average annual cost ($31,286) and you get $11.7 billion.
Accept ACERP’s figure for Federal emergency room care costs for illegal aliens and you get at least $20 billion. (Add in state and local subsidies and care for which hospitals are never paid or compensated and $20 billion would look cheap.)
These are just three of the many ways illegal aliens burden our social systems, just three and, just these three total $68.4 billion.
Illegals pay $1,050 in Federal, state and local income, excise and sales taxes of all kinds and ring up $6,218 in school, prison and medical costs.
Six times as much as they pay in taxes.
And you wondered why border states were so upset about illegal immigration and, why Trump (a notorious abuser of the alien work permit system) pivoted toward illegal immigration and reaped such a windfall of popularity.
These are facts of which low and medium income citizens are aware, even if upper income citizens not exposed to high crime rates and who have access to great medical care and private schools aren’t. Illegal aliens absorb far more of our resources than they contribute to us in return, far more — six times more.
When the Oklahoma Legislature passed the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act in 2007, making it a crime to employ or offer housing to illegal aliens, causing an exodus of illegals, some schools in Tulsa lost over 48% of their students. The city promptly declared itself a sanctuary city to get them back.
Oklahoma’s public schools rank 49th out of 50 states and, Tulsa’s public schools are ranked among the lowest in the state. Imagine those were your children, receiving the worst of the worst education in the country because half the school’s budget is consumed trying to teach illegals.
There are 6 billion people in the world and 5 billion of them live below the US poverty line. If you permit anyone who can drag himself or herself across the border to stay and share in our wealth, it won’t be long before we’re all living below the poverty line, trying to pay for 5 billion indigent new citizens.
Open borders, the great equalizers, will impoverish us all.
