Illegal immigration costs us more than whatever is theoretically saved through the cheap labor. And remember, American taxpayers wind up footing the bill for these folks for their children's free education and free health care they get in our hospitals and clinics. America is such a generous country to foreigners the only surprise is even more of them aren't coming here what with all the incentives they are offered.
It's all about whose pocket the money is coming out of. Business owners make out like bandits with the cheap labor. The government collects income taxes and social security that they may never have to pay out. These are the two main reasons it continues.
Any savings to the general public are trickle down in nature. The average taxpayer is screwed due to the high costs of education, health care, insurance costs, crime, etc.
Mass Immigration Cost American Taxpayers $69 Billion Net and 2 Million Jobs in 1997
Study by Dr. Donald Huddle Reports Legal Immigration of over 1 Million Per Year Accounts for over 62% of Costs
State Costs to Taxpayers are Also Soaring (1996 Net Costs % up from 1992):
California: $28 billion up 35%
New York: $14 billion up 29%
Texas: $7 billion up 37%
Florida: $6 billion up 77%
The first study of the net cost of immigration to American taxpayers in 1997 conducted by Dr. Donald Huddle, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Rice University, found that:
The nearly 26 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the United States since 1970 cost taxpayers a net $69 billion in 1997 alone, in excess of taxes those immigrants paid. This represents a cost of $260 in additional taxes paid by each U.S. resident or $1,030 in additional taxes paid by each family of four. This cost is a substantial increase over the net immigration costs of $65 billion ins 1996, $51 billion ins 1994, $44 billion in 1993, and $43 billion in 1992.
Over 62% of the net national cost of immigration in 1996, $40.6 billion, was attributable to legal and legalized (amnesty) immigrants. Illegal immigration generates about 38%, $24 billion of the total net cost. Legal immigration levels are over one million per year, and rising.
During 1996, approximately 2.3 million predominantly low-skill American workers were displaced from their jobs due to the continued heavy influx of immigrant workers since 1970. Taxpayers paid more than $15.2 billion in public assistance for those displaced workers in 1996, including Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), unemployment compensation, and food stamps.
A net deficit of $8.5 billion dollars to the Social Security system in 1996 is attributable to the economic impact of the foreign-born population. Continued mass immigration threatens the solvency of the Social Security system.
Net cumulative costs for the 1998-2007 decade are projected to reach $932 billion, an average of $93.2 billion per year, even with recent changes in welfare and immigration policies and a prosperous economy, if current mass immigration trends are allowed to continue.
Breakdown for 1997 Costs of Legal Immigration
Public Schools (Primary, Secondary, Higher, etc) $22.5 billion
Bilingual Education, ESOL, ESL Education $ 3.3 billion
Medicaid $12.8 billion
AFDC (for legal and illegal immigrant's offspring) $ 2.4 billion
Social Security $24.8 billion
Supplemental Security Income $ 2.9 billion
Housing Assistance $ 2.6 billion
Criminal Justice $ 2.6 billion
Jobs Lost by Americans $10.8 billion
Other Programs $51.4 billion
1997 Total Costs for LEGAL Immigration: $136 billion
Add 1997 total costs for illegal immigration of $41 billion and subtract an estimated $108 billion in taxes paid by all immigrants (legal and illegal) in 1997 to obtain the overall net figure of $69 billion charged to you, and other American taxpayers.
Other key facts regarding immigration are:
1.) If current immigration trends continue, the current U.S. population of
274 million will nearly double to over 500,000,000 by 2050. (The U.S. was 135 million at the end of WWII.)
2.) Harvard Professor George Borjas demonstrated that mass immigration costs American workers $133 billion per year in wage depression and job loss.
3.) The prestigious National Research Council found at the state and local levels (which bear most of the burden for K-12 education) the net fiscal burden of the average immigrant-headed household (i.e., after subtracting state and local taxes the household paid) was:
$1,484 per immigrant-headed household in New Jersey (in the 1989-1990 fiscal year); and $3,463 in California (in 1994-1995)(p. 276-277)
Why should we continue to allow our own working poor, homeless, and unemployed to continue to suffer from the job loss, wage depression, and other burdens imposed by mass immigration?
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/huddlenr.html
After driving around the island of Cozumel and seeing all the garbage that washes ashore, you'd think the gov't would hire locals to clean it up. Such a beautiful place, but unless they clean up the beaches (and it was really bad), they're going to lose a lot of tourism business. Beaches would be permanently closed in the US if they looked as bad.