COSTS OF ILLEGAL EMIGRATION TO ILLINOISANS

New Study: Illegal Emigration Costs Illinoisans $3.5 Billion a Year

Wed, 27 Jun 2007
by FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform)

WASHINGTON /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – While local politicians, including Gov. Rod Blagojevich, work to expand the benefits and services Illinois provides to illegal aliens, a new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that illegal emigration already costs the state $3.5 billion annually.

The $3.5 billion annual price tag associated with illegal emigration, according to the report, The Costs of Illegal Emigration to Illinoisans, covers the costs of only three basic state-provided services: K-12 education, publicly funded health care, and incarceration of illegal aliens who have committed other crimes after settling Illinois. In 2005, some 620,000 illegal aliens were estimated to live in Illinois.

Education represents the largest single component of Illinois' illegal alien fiscal liability – about $3.1 billion a year. Statewide, FAIR estimates about 110,000 children are in the country illegally and an additional 205,000 are children born here to illegal aliens. Combined, these students represent 10% of public school kids. Publicly funded health care for illegal aliens costs the state about $340 million a year, while illegal aliens in state prisons drain another $55 million from state coffers. The typical native-headed household in Illinois pays an estimated $695 a year in taxes to cover the costs of just these three programs, concludes the report.

"The release of this report on the costs of illegal emigration comes as the U.S. Senate is debating a massive illegal alien amnesty bill, supported by both of Illinois' senators, that would dramatically increase costs in Illinois and all across the country," observed Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "Illegal aliens already pose a substantial cost burden to Illinois and other states, and those costs would grow exponentially as poorly skilled illegal aliens gain legal status in this country."

The Costs of Illegal Emigration to Illinoisans follows up on a study conducted by the Urban Institute in 1994, which limited its analysis to the same three state funded program areas. At the time, the Urban Institute estimated the illegal alien population to be 176,000, while the state itself placed the estimate at 270,000. The rapid growth of the illegal population has driven state costs ever higher.

"Illegal emigration in Illinois, and the costs associated with it are spiraling out of control, creating a fiscal black hole that is swallowing up the state's resources," said Stein. "Illinois, like a lot of other states, is struggling with failing and overcrowded schools, a collapsing public health care system, crumbling infrastructure and other serious problems. At the same time, illegal emigration is taking a greater and greater bite out of the state's budget every year.

"Unfortunately, many Illinois leaders have responded to the fiscally devastating influx of illegal aliens by pandering to the special interests that benefit from illegal emigration at the expense of law-abiding, hard-working taxpayers," Stein concluded.

The Costs of Illegal Emigration to Illinoisans is available at http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_ilcosts.

FAIR Web site: http://www.fairus.org/

Costs of Illegal Emigration to Illinoisans

Executive Summary

Analysis based on current estimates of the illegal alien population residing in Illinois indicates that population costs the state’s taxpayers more than $3.5 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. That annual tax burden amounts to about $695 per Illinois household headed by a native-born resident. Even if the estimated $465 million in sales, income and property taxes collected from illegal aliens are subtracted from the fiscal outlays, net costs still amount to more than $3 billion per year.

The three cost areas discussed in this analysis (education, health care and incarceration resulting from illegal emigration) are the major cost areas. They are the same three program areas analyzed in a 1994 study conducted by the Urban Institute, which provides a useful baseline for comparison. Other studies have been conducted in the interim, showing trends that support the conclusions of this report.

Even without accounting for all of the numerous other areas in which costs associated with illegal emigration are being incurred by Illinois taxpayers, the program areas analyzed in this study indicate that the burden is substantial and that the costs are rapidly increasing.

The more than $3.5 billion in costs incurred by Illinois taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:

  • Education. Based on estimates of the illegal alien population in Illinois and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Illinoisans spend more than $3.1 billion annually on education for the children of illegal aliens. This estimate does not include programs for limited English students, remedial educational programs or breakfast and lunch programs available to students from low-income families. An estimated 10% of the K-12 public school students in Illinois are children of illegal aliens.
  • Health care. Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state’s illegal alien population amount to an estimated $340 million a year.
  • Incarceration. The uncompensated cost of incarcerating deportable illegal aliens in Illinois state and local prisons amounts to about $55 million a year. This estimate includes only prison costs and not short-term or other detention costs, related law enforcement and judicial expenditures, or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to incarceration.

The fiscal costs of illegal emigration borne by state taxpayers do not end with these three major cost areas. The total local cost of illegal emigration is considerably higher if other cost areas such as preventive health programs, special English instruction, interpretation services in courts and hospitals, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers are also calculated.

If illegal aliens were able to obtain legal work status as currently advocated by the Bush administration, and/or eventual permanent residence and possible citizenship as currently proposed in both houses of Congress, state income tax collections might increase, but this likely would be outweighed by increased use of public services to low-income families. In addition, the possibility for family members of the current illegal alien population to come to the United States to reunite families would increase the size of the poverty and near-poverty population using public services.

The full report is available in PDF format.

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_ilcosts