Posted on 05/08/2005 3:38:21 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
A decent border fence/wall with surveillance would cost around 8 billion to build, based on construction estimates I've seen.
WHY NOT HAVE THE ILLEGALS BUILD IT TO PAY OFF THEIR FINES AND THE COST OF PROSECUTING THEM?
The cartoon at the top really says it all.
right. Have guys in orange jump suits and ankle chains operating excavators, dozers, dump trucks, post drivers, and etc?
Very little border fence work could be done by unskilled labor, let alone those that were being forced to do it with no wages.
Entertaining thought thouh! ;^D
No, it is not a violation of a criminal statute to enter the U.S. without proper authorization, it is a civil violation. It is not a criminal offense to "be" in the U.S. without proper immigration status. And furthermore, up to half of the illegals entered legally as tourists, students, businessmen, etc...
The website from which this article comes is linked to some of the most disreputable sites on the Internet.
Had to stop reading right there.
Somebody ping bayourod, please? Be interestin' to see what our local illegal defender has to say.
The truth.
SEALING THE BORDER HAS BEEN PROVEN IMPOSSIBLE
We tried to seal 66 miles of the border in 1994 in “Operation Gate Keeper” designed by the military. It incorporated double and triple fences (some concrete and steel), guard towers, flood lights infrared cameras, ground sensors, patrol roads, horse patrols, ATV patrols, 16 helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, trucks, and a ratio of 32 guards per mile.
If it was successful the plan was to extend it from San Diego to El Paso. It wasn’t successful at all. See Inspector General’s Report ”experienced agents were estimating it was only 5-10 percent effective”
About two hundred thousand are caught each year trying to cross, and another estimated 30 to 40 thousand make it across undetected. They dig under, climb over and break through the fences.
That’s an average of 454 to 606 per mile per year. Extrapolated just to the 2000 mile Mexican border that would be about 1.2 million border jumpers per year. And we would still have the ones who enter from Canada or by air and water or legally on temporary visas and don’t return.
I have yet to see any source for that myth. Everything I've seen is just the opposite. Illegals are eligible for only a very few welfare programs. WIC is one of the few programs they qualify for, and that is only because the baby is an American citizen.
This entire essay is nothing but a compilation of myths and twisted statistics that originated on anti-immigrant sites such as CIS and other sites that can't even be referenced on FR.
Yeah, but the one's they are eligible for are sucking us dry and add to that what's spent on their healthcare, education, etc. that are non-welfare specific.
"Everything I've seen is just the opposite."
===============================
The OPPOSITE of the truth is called a DECEPTION:
Main Entry: de·cep·tion
Pronunciation: di-'sep-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English decepcioun, from Middle French deception, from Late Latin deception-, deceptio, from Latin decipere to deceive
1 a : the act of deceiving b : the fact or condition of being deceived
2 : something that deceives : TRICK
- de·cep·tion·al /-sh&-n&l/ adjective
synonyms DECEPTION, FRAUD, DOUBLE-DEALING, SUBTERFUGE, TRICKERY mean the acts or practices of one who deliberately deceives. DECEPTION may or may not imply blameworthiness, since it may suggest cheating or merely tactical resource <magicians are masters of deception>. FRAUD always implies guilt and often criminality in act or practice <indicted for fraud>. DOUBLE-DEALING suggests treachery or at least action contrary to a professed attitude <a go-between suspected of double-dealing>. SUBTERFUGE suggests the adoption of a stratagem or the telling of a lie in order to escape guilt or to gain an end <obtained the papers by subterfuge>. TRICKERY implies ingenious acts intended to dupe or cheat <resorted to trickery to gain their ends>.
===========================================
(FR Open Border Opinion Poll captured on 13 Feb, 2005 at 10:00 PM EST)
Free Republic Opinion Poll: Please indicate whether or not you support or oppose open borders and illegal immigration.
| Composite Opinion | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I OPPOSE open borders and illegal immigration. | 94.4% |   |
4,020 | |
| I SUPPORT open borders and illegal immigration. | 2.9% | |
125 | |
| Undecided/Pass. | 2.7% | |
115 | |
| 100.0% | 4,260 | |||
| Member Opinion | ||||
| I OPPOSE open borders and illegal immigration. | 94.3% | |
2,954 | |
| Undecided/Pass. | 3.4% | |
105 | |
| I SUPPORT open borders and illegal immigration. | 2.3% | |
73 | |
| 100.0% | 3,132 | |||
| Non-Member Opinion | ||||
| I OPPOSE open borders and illegal immigration. | 94.5% | |
1,066 | |
| I SUPPORT open borders and illegal immigration. | 4.6% | |
52 | |
| Undecided/Pass. | 0.9% | |
10 | |
| 100.0% | 1,128 | |||
Which ones are they eligible for?
"In recent years, public concern about illegal immigration has often focused on the costs associated with illegal aliens’ use of public benefits and the extent to which these benefits serve as an incentive for immigration.
1 In 1996, the Congress took steps to address these concerns through welfare and immigration reform legislation. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) further restricted the limited access of illegal aliens to federal public benefits and limited their access to state and local public benefits."
The devastation from the illegal alien invasion is pandemic - with not a single state or principality escaping it.
It is almost impossible to count the cost of this onslaught, and the federal government pads, hides, massages, and outright lies about the impact on a constant basis.
For that reason, let us focus on the ravages of illegal immigration on just one state for the sake of this conversation.
Bear in mind that these numbers are extremely conservative and still do not reflect the many intangible negative effects of illegal immigration such as diseases injected into the public school systems, etc. These numbers can be multiplied many times over and still not cover the damage being done to our nation.
Let's look at Texas:
==============================================
Executive Summary
Analysis of the latest Census data indicates Texas's illegal immigrant population is costing the state's taxpayers more than $4.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $3.7 billion per year. The annual fiscal burden amounts to about $725 per Texas household headed by a native-born resident.
This analysis looks specifically at the costs to the state for education, health care and incarceration resulting from illegal immigration. These three are the largest cost areas, and they are the same three areas analyzed in a 1994 study conducted by the Urban Institute, which provides a useful baseline for comparison ten years later. Other studies have been conducted in the interim, showing trends that support the conclusions of this report.
Other significant costs associated with illegal immigration exist, and these too should be taken into account by federal and state officials. Even without accounting for all of the numerous areas in which costs associated with illegal immigration are being incurred by Texas taxpayers, the program areas analyzed in this study indicate that the burden is substantial and that the costs are rapidly increasing.
The more than $4.7 billion in costs incurred by Texas taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:
State and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but they do not come near to matching the expenses. The total of such payments can generously be estimated at slightly less than $1 billion per year.
The fiscal costs of illegal immigration do not end with these three major cost areas. The total costs of illegal immigration to the state's taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as special English instruction, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers were also calculated.
While the primary responsibility for combating illegal immigration rests with the federal government, there are many measures that state and local governments can take to combat the problem. Texans should not be expected to assume this already large and growing burden from illegal immigration simply because local businesses or other special interests benefit from being able to employ lower cost workers. The state could adopt measures to systematically collect information on illegal alien use of taxpayer-funded services and on where they are employed. Policies could then be pursued to hold employers financially accountable.
The state could also enter into a cooperative agreement with the federal government for training local law enforcement personnel in immigration law so illegal immigrants apprehended for breaking the law can be expeditiously turned over to the immigration authorities for removal from the country. Similarly, local officials who have adopted "sanctuary" measures that shield illegal aliens from being reported to the immigration authorities should be urged to repeal them.
Texas has also voluntarily adopted policies that add to the cost burdens of illegal immigration. While all states are compelled under a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision to provide a free K-12 education to all children, irrespective of their immigration status, they are under no obligation to subsidize education beyond that point. Nevertheless, the Texas legislature and Governor Perry have decided to grant in-state tuition benefits at public colleges and universities to illegal aliens.
It is unreasonable for a state to expect federal assistance to compensate for the fiscal burden of illegal immigration if it is pursuing policies that encourage illegal aliens to come and remain in the state.
Background Information
Texas had the fourth highest proportion in the country of illegal immigrants in its population in 2000. According to a federal estimate, there were 1,041,000 aliens residing illegally in the state, which was about one-eighth of the country's total illegal alien population. That number of illegal aliens represented about 5 percent of the state's population.1 As recently as 1992, the INS estimated that the resident illegal alien population in the state was 357,000 persons—so the estimated illegal alien population increased by nearly three-fold in just eight years. These estimates do not include more than 445,000 persons (308,517 long-term illegal residents and 136,535 illegal agricultural workers) who were also part of Texas's illegal alien population until they were given legal residence as a result of the 1986 amnesty.2 
Not only has Texas's illegal alien population grown rapidly, the overall foreign-born population has shot up since the 1965 change in U.S. immigration law. Similarly, the size of the immigrant stock (which includes the progeny of immigrants as well as the foreign-born immigrants themselves) has surged. Both of these groups contribute to the costs of illegal immigration. The progeny of immigrants has more than doubled (136 percent) since 1970, while the foreign-born population has increased more than eight-fold (see chart).
This study looks at the fiscal costs and tax payments to the state associated with illegal immigration. It does not look at the goods and services produced by illegal alien workers, i.e., their economic contribution, as it may be assumed that if the work is essential, and illegal immigrants were unavailable, the work would be done by legal workers. Similarly, this study does not include the displacement costs incurred by legal workers who are laid off or fail to get a job as a result of being undercut by illegal workers willing to work for lower wages. Those costs, which would include unemployment compensation, welfare outlays, lost taxes, etc., are real, but difficult to quantify.
Studies of the cost of illegal immigration to Texans have been done previously. The 1994 Urban Institute study of the costs of illegal immigration—which included Texas—will be described in detail in the following section. It was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice in order to allow the federal government to respond to the lawsuits against it by Texas and other states seeking redress for their increasing fiscal burden.
Another study of the costs of immigration in Texas by Rice University economist Donald Huddle estimated the net fiscal costs from illegal immigration in 1996 to the state at about $1.38 billion. In addition, the study identified displacement costs—associated with unemployed American workers because of the illegal foreign workers—as representing an additional cost to the state's taxpayers of $511 million annually. The Huddle study estimated tax payments by illegal immigrants at slightly over $358 million.3
A study by a research firm, MGT of America, was done for the United States-Mexico Border Counties Coalition in 2002.4 The General Accounting Office released two studies in 2004, one on the process of estimating the uncompensated medical expenditures resulting from illegal immigration,5 and one on estimating the costs of illegal immigrants in public schools.6 All of these studies have been taken into consideration in the process of preparing this estimate of the current costs of illegal immigration to Texans.
National recognition of the fact that illegal immigration represents a fiscal burden, especially on states that border Mexico, may be seen in the fact that the Congress has authorized and appropriated funds in the past to assist Texas and other states for uncompensated medical expenses and for the incarceration of illegal immigrants. Federal recognition of the fiscal costs to state governments from illegal immigrants also may be seen in the State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants (SLIAG) program, which provided $3.5 billion to states in the aftermath of the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens to ease the burden of the additional expenses the states were required to assume.
In Texas, SLIAG funding was largest in 1990, when state agencies received $64 million, half of which went to the Texas Education Agency for distribution to local public school districts. The Texas Department of Health also received a major part of SLIAG funds.7 Over the course of the program, Texas state agencies received $338 million in SLIAG funds, almost 10 percent of the U.S. total.8 Those grants phased out in 1994, and the states since then have been bearing an unreimbursed burden associated with this amnestied illegal immigrant population.9
What Are the Costs of Illegal Immigration?
The costs of illegal immigration are both quantifiable and non-quantifiable. Because data on illegal immigration generally are not collected, even quantifiable costs must be educated estimates.
The absence of recorded data on illegal alien enrollment in school, use of taxpayer-supported medical care, and other public services is not accidental. It is due to the efforts of civil libertarians, business interests and immigrant support groups that have thwarted data collection efforts in order to keep these costs hidden from the taxpayers who must pay for them. The most recent example of these efforts to obscure the costs of services to illegal aliens may be seen in the campaign against a requirement that emergency health care providers collect information on illegal alien patients in order to receive compensation from a federal appropriation. The health care providers, civil libertarians and illegal immigrant advocacy groups vociferously opposed the data collection requirement, and HHS dropped it.10
Some of the quantifiable costs are:
Some of the non-quantifiable costs include:
There are also non-economic costs, such as a degraded learning environment that may result from students being unable to keep up with the class because of language difficulty. Other examples include inconvenience resulting from waiting to receive medical attention when there is congestion in the emergency admissions offices of public hospitals, and the closure of emergency rooms due to the overwhelming uncompensated costs.
There is also the unquantifiable cost of erosion of respect for the law when an increasing share of the population lives illegally in the country; when law enforcement officers are required to ignore this law breaking; when employers illegally hire unauthorized workers; and many of those workers are in the underground economy. Social cohesion may be strained by having to cope with increasingly pervasive language barriers, and rising income inequality associated with immigration.
Updating the Urban Institute Cost Estimates
In 1993, the annual cost to Texas and local governments for public education, emergency health care, social services, and incarceration for undocumented immigrants was estimated by the state to be $1.3 billion. At the time, Texas joined Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and New Jersey in unsuccessfully suing the federal government to recover some of these costs.17 In that legal initiative, Texas sought compensation from the federal government for emergency medical services provided to illegal immigrants, and for incarceration of illegal aliens. The lawsuits ultimately were dismissed as a political matter for which redress should be sought in Congress, not the courts.
However, in preparation for arguing the case in court, the Department of Justice contracted with the Urban Institute to study the claimed expenditures and provide estimates of the burden borne by the states. The Urban Institute released its report, Fiscal Impacts of Undocumented Aliens: Selected Estimates for Seven States, in September 1994. The study's methodology compared tax payments at all levels within the state with expenditures on only three programs,
albeit the major cost areas of education, health care, and incarceration. The study estimated the amount of state and local taxes paid by the illegal immigrants in Texas and used that amount to offset part of the estimated costs and arrive at a net uncompensated fiscal cost of about $250 million annually.
Size of the Illegal Immigrant Population
The Urban Institute based its cost calculation on an estimate of 389,000 illegal immigrant residents in Texas in 1993, while the state at that time estimated the illegal immigrant population at 550,000 persons. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated the 1992 illegal alien population in Texas at 320,000, and the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the 1993 illegal alien population at 520,000. These estimates were lower than estimates by demographers at the University of Texas.
The most recent estimate of the resident illegal immigrant population in Texas by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—before it merged into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—was 1,041,000 persons, reflecting the findings of the 2000 Census. This estimate, however, excludes certain categories of illegal immigrants such as those who have been in the country for less than one year and those granted Temporary Protected Status. The Migration Policy Institute released an estimate in May 2002 that Texas's illegal alien population in 2000 was 1.2 million.
The Urban Institute estimated that the illegal alien population nationwide in 2002 was 9.3 million persons and that 1.1 million, i.e., 11.8 percent of the national total, lived in Texas.18 The federal immigration authorities,19 who estimated that 14 percent of all illegal aliens in the United States resided in Texas in 1996, revised that estimated share upwards to nearly 15 percent after the 2000 Census. Currently they also estimate that nationally the illegal alien population is increasing by about half a million persons per year.
Based on our estimate that in 2004 the illegal alien population in the country is between 10 and 12 million persons, we estimate the illegal alien population in Texas in 2004 is between 1.5 and 1.8 million persons, i.e., 13-18 percent of the national total20 For this study we use a conservative estimate of 1.5 million illegal alien residents in the state, which is nearly four times the population used in calculations by the Urban Institute ten years ago. That would put the illegal alien share of the state's population at about 6.7 percent compared to the 5 percent share based on official estimates in 2000.
Size of the Illegal Alien K-12 Student Population
The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) recently released a report on difficulties in estimating state costs of illegal alien schoolchildren. It noted that data are not collected by most school systems, and that providing a precise estimate of the illegal alien population in public schools is currently not possible.21 The study's conclusion did not mean that ballpark estimates of the costs were inappropriate or invalid. It should be kept in mind the cost estimates in this study are not precise and are simply ballpark estimates done for the purpose of increasing awareness of the general magnitude of the burden borne by Texas's taxpayers.
The Urban Institute's 1994 study estimated K-12 illegal alien enrollment in Texas's public schools ten years ago at 93,907 students, about 30 percent higher than the state's estimate at that time of 72,101 illegal alien students.
A 1997 survey in El Paso and Houston found in El Paso about two-thirds (67 percent) of illegal immigrants had children in the public schools. In Houston, the comparable share was 40 percent.22 The study did not indicate how many children in a family were in the public schools.
FAIR, in its August 2003 research report "Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration Is Sending Schools Into the Red"23 used an Urban Institute estimate of the student share of the resident illegal population and calculated that a proportionate share in Texas in 2000 would be about 164,000 students. By 2004, the total illegal immigrant public school population would have risen to about 257,000 students, constituting a 64 percent increase in just four years. However, as noted in the GAO report, not all of the school age illegal immigrant children may be in school, and some may be attending other than public schools. But, because school attendance is mandatory, and the low incomes of most illegal alien families would limit private schooling options, the share of these students in public education is likely to be at least 80 to 90 percent of school-age illegal immigrant youth. This implies a range of 206,000 to 231,000 illegal immigrant students in the state's public schools.
As Texas is likely to have a larger than proportionate share of illegal immigrants compared to other states, given its proximity to the border and already sizable legal and illegal immigrant population, an estimate for 2004 of the illegal immigrant public school population in Texas of 225,000 is reasonable. That suggests that the public school-age illegal immigrant population has more than doubled since 1994 when the Urban Institute did its calculation.24
The estimate above of the illegal immigrant student population does not include those students who are the children of illegal immigrants but were born in this country. They too, however, would not be in the Texas public school system were it not for the illegal immigration of their parents, and the cost of educating them is an additional fiscal burden resulting from illegal immigration.25
Jeffery Passel, one of the Urban Institute researchers who participated in the 1994 and subsequent studies of the school-age population, recently estimated that there are nearly twice as many children born here to illegal immigrant parents as children illegally in the United States (3 million compared to 1.6 million).26 As many as three-quarters of them may be receiving educational benefits from pre-school through secondary school. Moreover, most of the children of illegal aliens who are not currently in the school system are below school age and will enter the system within a few years.
Applying the same proportion to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens yields an estimated additional 315,000 children of illegal immigrants in Texas's schools whose educational costs are included in this study.27 The combined 530,000 children of illegal aliens in public schools represent more than 11.9 percent of the state's total K-12 public school enrollment.28
Cost of Educating the Illegal Immigrant K-12 Population
The Urban Institute's 1994 calculation of the cost of K-12 education in Texas was based on a per-student cost to state taxpayers of about $4,461. This was slightly higher than the state's comparable cost estimate of about $4,146 per pupil per year. If costs remained constant, the Urban Institute's estimate of outlays on the education of the 2004 population of illegal alien students would have risen from about $419 million to a present cost of about $1 billion and the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens born in the United States would be about $1.9 billion. However, educational outlays have not remained constant.
The FAIR research report on educational outlays for illegal immigrant education used the $6,288 average per pupil cost in Texas reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for the 1999-2000 school year and calculated the cost of educating illegal immigrant students in Texas in 2000 to be about $1.03 billion based on the illegal alien population in 2000.29
Public educational expenses since 2000 have continued to rise. NCES data indicate that between the 1999-2000 school year and the 2002-2003 school year the per pupil expenses in Texas rose by about 7.7 percent to $6,771. Extending this trend through the 2003-2004 school year would make public education outlays at least 10 percent higher than they were in 2000. Thus, outlays in 2004 would be about $7,450 per pupil.
Using an average cost factor probably underestimates the costs associated with the illegal resident population. As the authors of the 1994 Urban Institute study explained, "We believe that undocumented aliens are more likely than other students to live in urban areas where per student expenses are relatively high."30
The state's admission of illegal aliens into the state's public universities and community colleges is an additional expense, but it is not included in the scope of this study. One estimate of that current cost in Texas is that it could cost the taxpayers $12 million per year.
Using the estimate of the illegal K-12 immigrant population—updated to 2004—and the estimated per pupil expenditure results in a current cost to Texas's taxpayers of at least $1.68 billion per year.
Using the same per pupil cost estimate for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens suggests that the additional expense of educating these children through the 12th grade is at least an additional $2.35 billion per year—or a total annual public educational cost from illegal immigration of more than $4 billion per year.
Emergency Medical Outlays Updated Estimate
"Over the past 10 years, the [Harris county hospital] district has provided $510 million in unreimbursed care to illegal immigrants, the district says."
The Houston Chronicle,
March 1, 2005
Estimates of the costs of uncompensated medical outlays are necessarily imprecise. As the GAO noted in a May 2004 report, "Hospitals generally do not collect information on their patients' immigration status, and as a result, an accurate assessment of undocumented aliens' impact on hospitals' uncompensated care costs—those not paid by patients or by insurance—remains elusive."31
However, there is no doubt that illegal immigrant usage of emergency medical care is a burden on local taxpayers, and this was recognized by the U.S. Congress in the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997, which provided $25 million in annual compensation to heavily impacted states. Congress renewed and upped the level of assistance tenfold in 2003 with an appropriation of $1 billion to be apportioned among all states over the 2005-08 fiscal years, i.e., $250 million each year.
Along with that proposed financial support, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed that as a condition for receiving the money, the hospitals would have to collect information on to whom the services were provided. But this was dropped after a deluge of protests from immigrant advocates, health care providers and others.
The Urban Institute's 1994 calculation of the annual unreimbursed expense to the state for emergency medical services in Texas was a range of $9-11.8 million. That range was about 50-60 percent of the state's estimate of $19.4 million for emergency medical services outlays for illegal aliens. A similar calculation today yields a much higher estimate.
The Urban Institute based its estimate of uncompensated medical outlays by Texas taxpayers on data collected by the federal government in the State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants (SLIAG) program. That program, authorized and funded by Congress, helped states cope with the additional services they were required to provide as a result of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act amnesty for nearly 3 million illegal alien residents. The Urban Institute researchers thought that the SLIAG model might overstate the use of uncompensated medical outlays for the non-legalized population because the aliens might be reluctant to seek publicly funded emergency medical care. Nevertheless, their calculation of the cost was based on their estimate of the size of the illegal immigrant population and the cost of emergency medical services at that time.
As we showed above, the estimated illegal alien population in 2004 in Texas is nearly four times larger today than it was ten years ago in the Urban Institute estimate. This implies, conservatively, that the Urban Institute's estimated emergency medical outlays would be between $35-$46 million today if costs were constant, which, of course, they are not. If those medical expenses were adjusted for inflation, they would be about $43-$56.4 million today.
Other Studies: A study of the use of health care services by illegal immigrants and family members residing in El Paso and Houston in the 1994-96 period found 36.4 percent of those in El Paso and 35 percent in Houston had visited a physician.32 In addition, 11.4 percent of illegal aliens or a family member had been hospitalized in El Paso, and 12.8 percent in Houston. The study revealed that among illegal aliens 6.4 percent had a birth in El Paso and 5 percent had used all other medical services, compared to 4.8 percent childbirth in Houston and 8.3 percent all other service usage. This same study found that in El Paso 2.5 percent of illegal immigrants reported using Medicaid, and in Houston the share was about 2.2 percent.
A 2001 study for the US/Mexico Border Counties Coalition, "Illegal Immigrants in U.S.-Mexico Border Counties: Costs of Law Enforcement, Criminal Justice and Emergency Medical Services," calculated the cost of unreimbursed medical services to illegal aliens in 12 border counties. The reported expenses totaled $1.8 million in 1999.33 If the costs in the rest of the state were proportionate to the level of expenses in those border counties, the statewide unreimbursed costs in 1999 would have been about $20 million. If that level of expenditure were adjusted for the much larger illegal alien population in 2004 and for the rising costs of medical services, the comparable cost on a statewide basis would be about $32.3 million in uncompensated medical outlays for illegal aliens.
However, the uncompensated medical expenses are likely to be higher in the border counties than elsewhere in the state. The 28 percent foreign-born population share in the border counties is about double the share for the rest of the state. If the estimated expenditures for the non-border counties are reduced by half for the rest of the state, the resulting estimate of outlays would be about $20 million.
The results were very different in 2002 when a consulting company, MGT of America, did a follow-up study for the Border Counties Coalition.34 The estimated uncompensated cost due to illegal immigrants in nine Texas border counties was $73.7 million. If costs throughout the state were proportionate, the total costs would have been $802 million, and if those costs were adjusted for the illegal alien population increase in the past two years and for inflation, the total would sum to $1.18 billion in 2004.
After accounting for the lower costs in the non-border counties, the resulting estimated annual cost of uncompensated medical coverage to Texas taxpayers would be about $570 million. This calculation does not take into account the expenditures on the children of illegal aliens who were born in this country, as their use of emergency medical services is compensated through Medicaid and is, therefore a burden at the national level rather than at the state level.
Thus, sources of estimated annual uncompensated medical outlays for illegal aliens vary widely from $43-$56 million in the Urban Institute methodology, or even lower in the 2001 Border Counties study, to $570 million (derived from the MGT study). The MGT study, unlike the Urban Institute study, relied on information supplied by hospitals and other health care providers. Although there would be a natural tendency for the health care providers to over-estimate out-of-pocket expenses, they are the only keepers of the data, and until such time as the federal government requires the submission of data on the number of illegal aliens provided emergency medical care and the amounts of expenditure involved, it will be difficult to second-guess their claims.
It seems likely that the out-of-pocket expenditures for medical care for illegal immigrants in Texas in 2004 amount to as much as $570 million. Compensation of about $51 million could be received by the state under the 2003 legislation. This fraction of the outlay would still leave the amount of the annual uncompensated outlays borne by the state's taxpayers at about to $520 million.
Size of the Illegal Alien Prisoner Population
In 1994, the Urban Institute estimated the illegal alien prisoner population to be 1,594 persons— about 61 percent of the state's calculation of 2,620 incarcerated illegal aliens. The discrepancy between the Urban Institute estimate and that of the state, according to the Urban Institute, is that the state included aliens subject to deportation by the immigration service, but who were not illegal aliens. This distinction presumably meant that the aliens had gained legal resident status but were still deportable as a result of the commission of a felony crime. It seems unreasonable to us to exclude aliens who are eligible for deportation from a calculation of the costs of the illegal alien population.
In FY 1999, the state documented 7,854 illegal alien detention years, i.e., the number of days that illegal aliens were held in state and county prisons divided by 365. In FY 2004, the state calculated about 8,235 prisoner years in the state penitentiary.35 Data collected for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) in FY 2003 and FY 2004 indicate that the Texas state prison system accounts for about 70 percent of the total illegal alien detentions in the state, with the remainder accounted for by county prisons.
Increasing the illegal alien prisoner population estimate to adjust for the county prisons suggests that the state's total illegal alien prison population in 2004 was about 11,800 prisoner years of incarceration. That is more than seven times the size of the illegal alien prisoner population used in the 1994 Urban Institute study.
This estimate does not include all costs of incarceration of illegal aliens. Additional expenses could be attributed to the locally jailed population of illegal aliens who are not covered by the SCAAP reporting and reimbursement.
Uncompensated Incarceration Cost Updated Estimated
The Urban Institute calculated in 1994 the annual cost of incarcerating an illegal alien was about $14,620. This was 13 percent lower than the state's cost estimate of $16,681 per prisoner year. Since that study, the state's illegal alien prisoner population has been steadily increasing, as noted above.
SCAAP data indicate that Texas has received partial compensation for the incarceration costs since 1995. For 1999, the state received about $59 million in compensation, which was 38.6 percent of the expenditures. This meant Texas's taxpayers absorbed more than $152 million in expenses. The average per prisoner cost was calculated by the state at about $14,419 a figure slightly less than in the 1994 study.
Congress cut the amount of funds available for SCAAP reimbursement since 1999 resulting in the share of federal reimbursement being similarly decreased. In fiscal year 2001, Texas received SCAAP compensation of $45.3 million, i.e., only 19.3 percent of the itemized illegal alien expenditures. Texas received a SCAAP award of about $21 million in 2003 and about $24.7 million in 2004 ($17.1 million by the state, and the balance by the counties). The estimated average cost per prisoner year in the state penitentiary system in 2004 is $14,622 and the total cost to the state's taxpayers was slightly more than $120 million.36 If the same estimated cost per illegal alien inmate is used for calculating the cost in county prisons, their costs for 3,530 inmate years would represent a cost of about $51.6 million.
On the basis of an illegal alien inmate population in Texas of 11,800 prisoner years, the total incarceration cost will be about $172 million per year. Offsetting reimbursements under SCAAP reduce that to a net amount of out-of pocket expenditures of about $150 million to be absorbed by the Texas taxpayers.
This estimate, based on state data reporting, seems likely to be too low as it implies that the incarcerated illegal alien population has not increased proportionate to the overall rise in the illegal alien population and per prisoner costs have held steady.
Other Studies: A 2001 study by the U.S./Mexico Border Counties Coalition estimated the annual cost of law enforcement and criminal justice associated with illegal immigration in 12 Texas border counties in 1999 at more than $20 million.37 If those costs were expanded for all of the state's population, adjusted for the increase in the illegal alien population since 1999 and increased to reflect higher costs, that cost today would be about $275 million per year. These expenses include more than just illegal alien detention.
Offsetting Taxes Paid By Illegal Immigrants
The Urban Institute study provided only the researchers' (but not the state's) estimate of state and local income tax payments plus sales and property taxes paid by illegal immigrants. These amounted to a total of $202 million. Included in that total were state sales taxes (60 percent) and state and local property taxes (40 percent). Because there is no state income tax, that was not part of the calculation for Texas. Sales taxes and property taxes will have risen with inflation, and the size of the illegal immigrant population also has risen since the 1994 study.
Estimates of tax contributions are inherently difficult because many illegal workers are working in the underground economy, e.g., as day laborers or in sweatshops, and pay no income tax.38 In addition, some taxes are being collected from illegal workers even if they work in the "informal sector," because they pay sales taxes and they indirectly pay property taxes even if they only contribute to the rent on an apartment.
If the Urban Institute's estimate of state and local tax collections rose in proportion to the rise in the illegal immigrant population, it would have reached about $779 million in 2004. However, as sales tax and property tax payments have probably kept up with inflation, this estimate must be further increased to allow for that.
Updating for both the increased illegal immigrant population and for inflation suggests that current annual tax payments would be about $579 million in sales taxes and $386 million in property taxes—for a total of about $965 million. That represents more than a fourfold increase from the amount estimated by the Urban Institute ten years ago.
Balancing the Outlays for and Receipts from Illegal Immigrants
The analysis of fiscal outlays and receipts associated with illegal immigration suggest a total cost to Texas taxpayers of $4.7 billion per year and a net cost of about $3.7 billion per year. This includes outlays for only education, medical care and incarceration of illegal immigrants but not numerous other expenses borne by the Texas taxpayer as a result of the extremely large presence of illegal immigrants in the state. If other expenditures, such as local law enforcement and jail costs, special language instruction, and other state and local government programs were included in the estimate, it is clear that the costs attributable to Texas taxpayers as a result of illegal immigration would be much higher. A 1997 national level comprehensive study on the fiscal costs of illegal immigration found the expenditures for the three cost areas included in this study amounted to only about one-fourth of total expenditures without including an estimate for costs associated with displacement of American workers.39
In 2004 there were about 6.5 million households in Texas headed by native-born residents. So the average cost to those households to support the estimated 1.5 million illegal aliens and another 290,000 children of illegal immigration is at least $725 per native household per year. This cost does not include their share of the costs that are paid at the federal level that result from this same population of illegal aliens.
This per household estimate is higher than the national average, but less than the estimated costs per native household in California in 1997 reported by a panel of experts for the National Academies of Science (NAS) i.e., $1,178 per year.40 This NAS calculation for California included costs from both legal and illegal immigrants. The principal author of the NAS report, economist James P. Smith, noted that, "The undocumented tend to be less skilled, less educated,"41 thereby implying that the costs associated with illegal immigrants would be higher because of their lower earnings and tax payments.
Reccommendations
The significant fiscal costs to Texans associated with illegal immigration are not inevitable. While the federal government has the primary responsibility for enforcing immigration laws, state and local governments have a role to play that can either discourage or encourage illegal immigrants settling in their area. For example, state and local policies can either facilitate or hinder federal immigration law enforcement efforts.
While the border states should not be expected to bear an unfair burden resulting from the federal government's failure to exclude unauthorized entries and overstays by aliens, it would be similarly unfair that those states have their expenses underwritten by taxpayers across the country if they have adopted laws or policies that encourage the settlement of illegal immigrants in their state.
Examples of state and local policies that undermine federal immigration law enforcement efforts and encourage illegal immigrant settlement include the following:
Examples of state and local government practices that would discourage illegal alien settlement and facilitate federal enforcement of the immigration law include the following:
Texas allows illegal immigrants to enroll in state universities as if they were legal residents. Driver's licenses in Texas issued to foreigners are not limited to the visitors permitted stay. This means that a person who stays illegally in the country is free to continue to use a valid state driver's license as an identity document for employment and other purposes. Numerous county and municipal governments in the state support day laborer hiring centers that facilitate the employment of illegal immigrants and recognize the Mexican matricula consular ID cards.
National Policies that Have Local Impact
Texans have a right to expect their national and local elected representatives to work to alleviate the fiscal burden of illegal immigration. To simply convert illegal alien students or workers from illegal alien status to legal resident status with an amnesty is not a valid way to deal with the problem. Rather, experience with the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens indicates that rewarding today's illegal aliens only encourages others to come tomorrow. A policy that conveys the message that the country or any state or local government will tolerate and reward foreigners who ignore our immigration law invites the world to see illegal immigration as an accepted route to seeking a better life in our country and perpetuates the problem.
As Barbara Jordan, a former congresswoman from Texas, a University of Texas law school professor, and chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform summed up her view on immigration;
"The credibility of immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick: people who should get in, do get in; people who should not get in are kept out; and people who are judged deportable are required to leave." (U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility, USCIR 1994)
Most Texans agree with Dr. Jordan's view. A Texas Poll conducted by the Scripps Howard Data Center in August 2001 found that a vast majority of Texans—including two-thirds of Hispanics—consider illegal immigration from Mexico a problem, and more than half (51 percent) consider it a "very serious problem."42
Texas's elected representatives should be expected to recognize that they owe it to the state's citizens and legal residents to take actions that demonstrate that the United States is founded on respect for the rule of law, and that we will no longer accommodate those who disrespect our immigration law.
Endnotes
This report was prepared by Jack Martin and Ira Mehlman.
April 2005
Americans remind me of the Jews in Germany in 1933. They know something bad is coming, they hear people telling them their time has come to die, yet they sit and wait for death and destruction to come upon them.
One is 'Baby Insurance.' You've heard of Baby Insurance, haven't you?
Yeah, me neither. Not until my sister told me about the young lady who asked her for help validating her fake ID so that she could get it.
She was talking about AHCCCS, Arizona's form of MEDICAID, that pays the medical bills for the poor. She wanted free healthcare during her pregnancy, and free delivery services. My sister refused to help her. I'm sure someone else did.
You post talks about a law passed in '96 that you're hoping we believe is enforced. Nice try, guy.
When actual facts are presented that prove the myths to be false the antis respond out of frustration by personal attacks.
Eventually the facts sink in and the myths are repeated less often.
Did you see this article:
Washington Times 3-30-05
"Virginia Gov. Mark Warner yesterday signed into law a measure that denies illegal aliens public benefits, including access to Medicaid, welfare and local health care services. "
If your state has decided to pay illegals welfare, Dont blame Bush.
That must mean that illegals are not eligible for it. So there's no problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.