Economic impact of illegal immigration to the United States

The overall economic impact of Illegal Immigrants to the United States is a contested issue.

Historic views

According to a 1998 article in The National Academies Press, "many [previous studies] represented not science but advocacy from both sides of the immigration debate...often offered an incomplete accounting of either the full list of taxpayer costs and benefits by ignoring some programs and taxes while including others," and that "the conceptual foundation of this research was rarely explicitly stated, offering opportunities to tilt the research toward the desired result." One survey conducted in the 1980s (before the current wave of illegal immigration) found that 76 percent of economists felt recent illegal immigration had had a positive effect on the economy.

Supply and demand for labor

Labor is a mobile economic factor of production and Peter Andreas asserts that illegal immigration is spurred on by periods of high demand for labor.

"Supporters of a crackdown argue that the U.S. economy would benefit if illegal immigrants were to leave, because U.S. employers would be forced to raise wages to attract American workers. Critics of this approach say the loss of illegal immigrants would stall the U.S. economy, saying undocumented workers do many jobs few native-born Americans will do."

According to the executive vice president of Banco Popular, the bank had found no higher rate of default in home loans to illegal immigrants than any other market the company serves. A free migration argument consistent with free market economy would require us to first have a free market and no welfare system.

In October 2008, KFYI reported that according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, five million illegal immigrants hold fraudulent home mortgages. The story was later pulled from their website and replaced with a correction. The Phoenix Business Journal cited a HUD spokesman saying there is no basis to news reports that more than 5 million bad mortgages are held by illegal immigants, and that the agency has no data showing the number of illegal immigrants holding foreclosed or bad mortgages. Radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Lee Rodgers repeated a variation of the claim without noting that HUD has reportedly stated that this statistic is false. Roger Hedgecock also repeated the incorrect claim on CNN's Lou Dobbs show.

Taxes and social services

The IRS estimates that about 6 million unauthorized immigrants file individual income tax returns each year. Research reviewed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that between 50 percent and 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes. Undocumented workers are estimated to pay in about $7 billion per year into Social Security.

Professor of Law Francine Lipman writes that the belief that undocumented migrants are exploiting the US economy and that they cost more in services than they contribute to the economy is "undeniably false". Lipman asserts that "undocumented immigrants actually contribute more to public coffers in taxes than they cost in social services" and "contribute to the U.S. economy through their investments and consumption of goods and services; filling of millions of essential worker positions resulting in subsidiary job creation, increased productivity and lower costs of goods and services; and unrequited contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs."

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reviewed 29 reports published over 15 years on the impact of unauthorized immigrants on the budgets of state and local governments. While cautioning that the reports are not a suitable basis for developing an aggregate national effect across all states, they concluded that:

• State and local governments incur costs for providing services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited options for avoiding or minimizing those costs
• The amount that state and local governments spend on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a small percentage of the total amount spent by those governments to provide such services to residents in their jurisdictions
• The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants, although the impact is most likely modest.
• Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.

Aviva Chomsky, a professor at Salem State College, states that "Early studies in California and in the Southwest and in the Southeast...have come to the same conclusions. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, are more likely to pay taxes than they are to use public services. Illegal immigrants aren't eligible for most public services and live in fear of revealing themselves to government authorities. Households headed by undocumented immigrants use less than half the amount of federal services that households headed by documented immigrants or citizens make use of."

Editorialist Robert Samuelson points out that poor immigrants strains public services such as local schools and health care. He points out that "from 2000 to 2006, 41 percent of the increase in people without health insurance occurred among Hispanics", although he makes clear that these facts are true of legal as well as illegal immigrants. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, in March 2000, 25.8% of Mexican immigrants lived in poverty — more than double the rate for natives in 1999. In another report, The Heritage Foundation notes that from 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million.

Michael D. Antonovich, a board member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, has said that welfare costs for illegal immigrants in LA County were over $37 million in September 2007 and that they had increased $2 million over the previous two months. He also said that 25% of all welfare and food stamp benefits go directly to children of illegal aliens and that the projected annual cost in welfare and food stamps for illegal aliens would be $444 million - including public safety and healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to the County exceeded $1 billion a year - not including the millions of dollars for education.

Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico and current Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, asserts that illegal immigrants are only a drain on government services when they are incapable of paying taxes; and that this incapacity is the result of restrictive federal policies that require proof of citizenship. He further argues that the US economy has "crucial" need for migrant workers, and that the current debate must acknowledge this rather than just focus on enforcement.

The Internal Revenue Service issues an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) regardless of immigration status because both resident and nonresident aliens may have Federal tax return and payment responsibilities under the Internal Revenue Code. Federal tax law prohibits the IRS from sharing data with other government agencies including the INS. In 2006 1.4 million people used ITIN when filing taxes, of which more than half were illegal immigrants.

Social security

The Social Security Administration has stated that it believes unauthorized work by non-citizens is a major cause of wage items being posted as erroneous wage reports instead of on an individual's earnings record. When Social Security numbers are already in use; names do not match the numbers or the numbers are fake, or the person of record is too old, young, dead etc., the earnings reported to the Social Security Agency are put in an Earnings Suspense file [ESF]. The Social Security spends about $100 million a year and corrects all but about 2% of these. From Tax Years (TY) 1937 through 2003 the ESF had accumulated about 255 million mismatched wage reports, representing $520 billion in wages and about $75 billion in employment taxes paid into the over $1.5 trillion in the Social Security Trust funds. As of October 2005, approximately 8.8 million wage reports, representing $57.8 billion in wages remained unresolved in the suspense file for TY 2003.

Impact on poverty

Research by George Borjas (Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard University) found that the influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) from Mexico and Central American from 1980 to 2000 accounted for a 3.7% wage loss for American workers (4.5% for black Americans and 5% for Hispanic Americans). Borjas found that wage depression was greatest for workers without a high school diploma (a 7.4% reduction) because these workers face the most direct competition with immigrants, legal and illegal.

Impact on African Americans

“We're being overrun,” says Ted Hayes of Choose Black America, which has led anti-illegal immigration marches in south-central Los Angeles, California. “The compañeros have taken all the housing. If you don't speak Spanish they turn you down for jobs. Our children are jumped upon in the schools. They are trying to drive us out.” He also touts illegal immigration as the biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery. Hayesâ Crispus Attucks Brigade and the American Black Citizens Opposed to Illegal Immigration Invasion have organized protests against illegal immigration.

Education

Using the U.S. INS statistics on how many illegal immigrants are residing in each state and the U.S. Dept of Education's current expenditure per pupil by state, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, known for its anti-immigrant stance, has estimated cost of educating illegal alien students was as follows

State	Illegal Alien Students
California	$3,220,200,000
Texas	$1,645,400,000
New York	$1,306,300,000
Illinois	$834,000,000
New Jersey	$620,200,000
For all 50 states	$11,919,900,000

Spending for public education of undocumented children in K-12 public education in Minnesota for 2003-2004 was a total of $78.76 million to $118.14 million.

For the same time period, total spending in New Mexico at the state and local levels for illegal immigrant schoolchildren was about $67 million

Health care

Because of the U.S. Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd), most hospitals may not refuse anyone treatment for an emergency medical condition regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay. Uncompensated care generates a significant financial burden on hospital emergency departments and cost-shifting to insured and paying patients.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) continues to bring injured and ill undocumented immigrants to hospital emergency rooms without taking financial responsibility for their medical care. Almost $190 million or about 25 percent of the uncompensated costs southwest border county hospitals incurred resulted from emergency medical treatment provided to undocumented immigrants

In 2006, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority estimated that it would spend about $9.7 million on emergency Medicaid services for unauthorized immigrants and that 80 percent of those costs would be for services associated with childbirth.

Data from personal interviews

At least two research studies have been done which attempt to discover the cost of health care for illegal immigrants by asking the illegal immigrants themselves.

• A phone survey in which Alexander Ortega and colleagues at the University of California asked illegal immigrants how often they receive medical care reported that illegal immigrants are no more likely to visit the emergency room than native born Americans, though their bills are usually either unpaid or passed on to the state.
• A RAND study concluded that the total federal cost of providing medical expenses for the 78% illegal immigrants without health insurance coverage was $1.1 billion, with immigrants paying $321 million of health care costs out-of-pocket. The study found that undocumented immigrants tend to visit physicians less frequently than U.S. citizens because they are younger and because people with chronic health problems are less likely to immigrate.

Contagions and epidemic

To reduce the risk of mortality from infection diseases in low-incidence areas, the main countermeasure has been the screening of immigrants on arrival. Prior to being awarded a green card, legal immigrants over the age of 15 must have a chest x-ray or skin test to check for tuberculosis. Illegal immigrants are not screened in this manner.

See also

• Economic impact of immigration to Canada