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CONTACT: Center for American Progress |
The $285 Billion Nonsolution: The Cost of Deportation
New CAP report details the severe consequences of a deportation-only immigration policy on the nation's economy and the drain on the federal treasury.
WASHINGTON - March 19 - It has been almost three years since Congress tried to reform the nation’s broken immigration system. Since then, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have each greatly increased spending to deploy new enforcement strategies, but enforcement alone has not worked. The inherent dysfunction of our immigration system has deepened and the public call for solutions has amplified.
Instead of heeding the public’s demand that the immigration system be repaired, immigration restrictionists call for deportation of the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, or “deportation through attrition,” which means making life so miserable for the undocumented and their families, that, in theory, they would simply get up and leave.
Seeking to turn the irresponsible deportation rhetoric into real dollars, a new report by the Center for American Progress, “Calculating the Costs of Mass Deportation of Undocumented Immigrants,” details what it would cost to find and apprehend, detain, legally process, and transport the almost 11 million undocumented people and maintain current enforcement levels at the border and interior for five years.
The price tag is staggering: $285 billion.
The deportation alone would cost $200 billion, on top of the $85 billion that would be required to maintain the current enforcement strategy for five years.
This new CAP report details the severe consequences of a deportation-only policy on the nation’s economy and the drain on the federal treasury. Using publicly available data, the study analyzes the costs and steps that would be required to carry out such a program—from point of arrest through transportation out of the country. Our report adopts conservative assumptions for key variables to ensure that the estimated program and spending requirements are realistic and not overstated. The findings are not just sobering; they prove that a deportation-only immigration strategy would be the height of folly.
How much is $285 billion?
· $922 in new taxes for every man, woman, and child in this country.
· It would pay 6.7 million Americans’ salaries for a year.
· Enough to hire 1 million new high school teachers and pay their salaries for five years.
Read more about what we could do with $285 billion, here.
Watch a short video that breaks down the numbers, here.
In other words, it is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
On the other side of the equation, we know that legalization of undocumented immigrants would add a cumulative $1.5 trillion in GDP over 10 years—through increased consumer spending, higher tax receipts, and other related factors. A deportation approach, by contrast, would have the cumulative effect of draining $2.5 trillion over 10 years from the U.S. economy. That is a $4 trillion swing in GDP depending on which policy approach we adopt.
This report shows how deportation is not a solution. The answer lies in a tough, fair and practical comprehensive immigration reform that serves our national economic and security interests and values.
The following CAP immigration experts will be available today and through the weekend to provide comment and analysis.
- Angela M. Kelley, VP of Immigration Policy and Advocacy
- Vanessa Cardenas (in English or Spanish), Director of Progress 2050
- Marshall Fitz, Director of Immigration Policy
Please contact Suzi Emmerling at semmerling@americanprogress.org or 202 344-0404 to speak with them. Para entrevistas en español, favor de comunicarse con Raúl Arce-Contreras al rarcecontreras@americanprogress.org o 202.478.5318.
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3 Comments so far
Show AllNo need for a major deportation effort.
Mandate every business use E Verify. It only catches 50% of foreigners working here illegally, but it is better than nothing. It also means a small number of people will have to take an extra step to prove their right to work here. No big deal.
Then demand the Social Security Administartion issue the "no match" letter to business, which will indentify the other 50% who have illegal taken American jobs.
I bet the 25 million unemmployed Americans would cheer.
If foreigners cannot work here illegally, they will self deport.
Cut all benefits except emergency medical, and schooling for kids, and illegal aliens will flee.
End of problem.
Looks like apittance for a one time solution when compared to the annual Federal expenditure of 346 billion illegal alien costs: health and human services per year. And that is not counting state expense (see below).
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Contributed by Frosty Wooldridge (Editor)
Thursday, March 18, 2010 6:36
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This story has been viewed 6 times
By Frosty Wooldridge
Every 30 days, month in and month out, year in and year out, your U.S. senators and House representatives along with President Obama allow 200,000 legal and illegal immigrants to move into America—give or take a few hundred thousand. By year’s end, they total 2.4 million virtually uneducated, unskilled and lack English language abilities while arriving with a plethora of diseases and other health care needs.
Who pays? You do! How much? Each year, you shell out $346 billion in taxes to pay for those immigrants across 15 federal agencies.
The Department of Health and Human Services spent $672.9 billion in 2007 according to financial analyst Edwin S. Rubenstein.
“Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax, and are more likely to receive public benefits than American citizens,” said Edwin Rubenstein, reporting on the National Research Council’s new book: The New Americans: Economic, Demographics and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. The Social Contract Winter 2007-08. www.thesocialcontract.com
When legal immigrants arrive, your tax dollars funnel into their “Individual Development Accounts.” You pay them $1.00 for every dollar they place into a saving account. They receive up to $4,000.00 per household. In other words, they could not sustain themselves when they arrived, so you pay for them to stay. Neat government trick, huh?!
Congress pays out $25 million of your tax dollars annually to this little toilet bowl financial hole. Congress and Obama add legally 1.2 million accounts annually.
“In 2006, 38 million U.S. residents were foreign born,” Rubenstein said. “Most immigrants are poorly educated and lack basic skills required for middle class jobs, which include health benefits. Immigrants account for 59 percent of uninsured people.”
“Currently Congress considers an expansion of benefits to 400 percent of the poverty line--$83,000.00 for a family of four,” Rubenstein said. “Approximately 6.7 million children and adults are covered. In 2006, federal expenditures totaled $5.5 billion. About $605 million was spent on immigrants.”
Adding to this bombshell cost assessment for legal and illegal immigrants; the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985” requires hospitals to serve illegal aliens who seek emergency care. Your tax collars pay $167 million for illegal aliens.
Drug addiction and alcoholism make up the fastest “disabilities” illegal aliens claim in our ER hospitals:
In 1983: 3,000 cases
In 1994: 101,000 cases
In 2003: 325,000 cases
“EMTALA givers illegals more than medical treatment. A “disability” diagnosis automatically qualifies them for immediate cash transfer payments,” Rubenstein said. “The numbers are staggering.”
127,900 illegals on SSI in 1982
601,400 illegals in 1992
2,000,000 illegals in 2003
While they use our medical services, illegal and legal immigrants send cash transfers back home to their own countries in excess of $80 billion annually. Mexico alone receives $24 billion annually. All the while, they send our working poor into the unemployment lines or welfare.
As reported by Brian Williams at NBC, “Twenty-eight million Americans received food stamps in the month of April 2009.” In March of 2010, that number rose to 35 million!
Dr. Steve Camarota of www.cis.org said, “The persistently high rate of welfare use by immigrant households is almost entirely explained by their heavy reliance on Medicaid, use of which has actually risen.”
Of special note, 86 hospitals and ER’s bankrupted out of existence in California in the past six years. Why? That state houses 4,000,000 illegal aliens.
When you combine the figures of the phenomenon of 400,000 babies born each year in the USA to illegal mothers, the costs in human services reaches into the billions and billions of dollars. All from American taxpayers! But it doesn’t stop there! Taxpayers must shell out their money to pay for K-12 education along with ESL and breakfasts and lunch programs for our new poor class.
With America importing 200,000 more legal and illegal immigrants every 30 days, it’s a matter of time before more schools fail to educate, more hospitals bankrupt and prisons explode with added prisoners from foreign lands.
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JUST AMEND THE 1986 IMMIGRATION CONTROL & REFORM ACT
The administration had better take notice of the American people, specially in border states that have been invaded by illegal trespassers. That is not saying that a hundred percent of illegal alien families that have poured across our sovereignty fence line Millions of other law breakers have either thrown away their return airline tickets, or just let their entry visa expired to take up illegal residents here. None of this should be tolerated? If it was in my power I would implement Mexico's strict immigration laws, which are--ENFORCED Unlike our country, that has been jettisoned by years of greed. Politicians have remained the lap-dogs of corporate welfare, even as they play lip-service to pacify the people who have urged physical enforcement through many Presidents. Unfortunately if Amnesty gets the votes, E-Verify, local police detainment, ICE raids and everything else in the enforcement arsenal, will become obsolete. Those already here can then bring in their extended family, which mean just calculating the numbers already here and it will at least triple.. And before the CIR is even signed millions more will try to to dodge detection and will become the next layers of illegal immigrants, who will bankrupt every state and county looking for free handouts. We need superior skilled workers, not people that end up in the welfare line or on church doorsteps. IF AMNESTY PASSES, FAMILY UNIFICATION WILL BRING INTO THIS COUNTRY IRREVERSIBLE MILLIONS MORE. SOMEWHERE IN ACCESS OF 60 TO 70 MILLION.
America is in crisis mode, from the unceasing flow of destitute foreigners who have swamped the welfare system. Proponents keep repeating that their-ONLY-here to work, "Jobs Americans wont do..?" It's proved to be a bitter lie.This has just been pure propaganda by just noting the sudden appearance of US citizens and residents for vacant jobs. Shown after the raids at meat packing plants in the hinterland. It's been repeated time and again, that Americans cannot survive on the pittances that greedy businesses will pay illegal hiring.
I don't know how the Amnesty is going to go over should it pass, as out-of-work Americans might turn ugly. For sure all Democrats and Republics will be sacrificed, at the midterm and in November elections Any kind of pardon for people who ignored our laws, could cause unrest and even riots of millions of Americans, before they march on Washington. When 15 million Americans have lost their jobs with no ending in sight and cannot put food on the table for their kids and spouses it might cause massive protests The population are seething with anger over health care, an illegal US census, which enumerates illegal immigrants who should not even be here? Then we have this Amnesty travesty, that will give an absolutely free reward to people who ignored the "Rule of Law". Those who have a right by birth to be here, or by the generosity of THE PEOPLE are allowed to immigrate here. But illegal immigrants are allowed to give the finger, yet given a golden stipend. For the same violation Americans would be imprisoned for breaking the law in Mexico or other countries
Even industrialized nations have no leniency for people who shun the law. Politicians--our elected civil servants are supposedly acting in the name of the majority of the American people. When in actual fact, they enact laws on behalf wealthy businessmen, who can pay them the most money. It should be remembered that this clump of mostly corrupt legislators were attorneys, before they joined the wolf pack in Washington. They may have had sincere intentions, to originally carry out the publics wishes. But somewhere down the line they were corrupted by the lobbyists, swarming by the cartload on the Capitol buildings like copious flies, their wallets stuffed with money and favors? Only Americans and legal residents should have a right to assemble, not foreign nationals in rallies demanding rights. Its a sure to infuriate the millions who have waited years patiently to receive an entry visa.
They are probably are asking themselves why bother with laws, when you can slip through a non-existing fence in some places. Perhaps they should recognize, that they don't have to cringe in the shadows, because they didn't violate the immigration laws. We have become soft as a nation and have let the business community and open border groups intimidate us. Its not these entities that pay for these people that they hire? Its the American taxpayers who carries the the whole and complete financial weight of the extra subsistence for these illegal aliens. Join this historic war against unrestrained illegal immigration, DIMINISHING RESOURCES, CROWDED HIGHWAYS, FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE, OVERPOPULATION GROWTH at numbersusa.dot.com.(millions have?) Discover the corruption in Washington at judicialwatch.dot.org. Make your vote known at the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121