Posted on 12/07/2004 1:00:09 PM PST by SierraWasp
Cost of illegal immigration in California estimated at nearly $9 billion
By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer
California's nearly 3 million illegal immigrants cost taxpayers nearly $9 billion each year, according to a new report released last week by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes stricter immigration policies.
Educating the children of illegal immigrants is the largest cost, estimated at $7.7 billion each year, according to the report. Medical care for illegal immigrants and incarceration of those who have committed crimes are the next two largest expenses measured in the study, the author said.
Pro-immigrant groups and Latino researchers dispute the federation's findings, calling them biased and incomplete.
Jack Martin, who wrote the report, said Thursday that the $9 billion figure does not include other expenses that are difficult to measure, such as special English instruction, school lunch programs, and welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal immigrant workers.
"It's a bottom of the range number," Martin said.
The federation is one of the nation's leading lobbying groups aimed at curbing immigration into the country.
Authors of the report say it culls information from the U.S. Census and other studies addressing the cost of illegal immigration into the country to draw its conclusions.
Gerardo Gonzalez, director of Cal State San Marcos' National Latino Research Center, which compiles data on Latinos, criticized the report. He said it does not measure some of the contributions that immigrants make to the state's economy.
"Beyond taxes, these workers' production and spending contribute to California's economy, especially the agricultural sector," Gonzalez said.
Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are the backbone of the state's nearly $28 billion-a-year agricultural industry, Gonzalez and other researchers say.
More than two-thirds of the estimated 340,000 agriculture workers in California are noncitizens, most of whom are believed to be illegal immigrants, according to a 1998 study on farmworkers prepared for the state Legislature.
Local farmers say migrant farmworkers are critical to their businesses, and without them they would have to close their farms or move their operations overseas.
Martin disagrees. He said illegal immigrants displace American workers by taking low-skilled jobs, keep wages low by creating an overabundance of workers and stifle innovation by reducing the need for mechanized labor.
"The product of the illegal immigrant is not included (in the report) because if that is an essential product it will get done one way or another," Martin said. Employers "would have to pay better wages or invest money on mechanization."
Martin's study looks specifically at the costs of educating illegal immigrants' children, providing medical care to illegal immigrants and jailing those convicted of committing crimes. The report estimates the total cost at $10.5 billion each year, but that is offset by about $1.7 billion in taxes that illegal immigrants pay.
The study assumes that there are about 1 million children of illegal immigrant parents in California, or about 15 percent of the state's K-12 school enrolled population. The estimate is based on a 1994 study by the Urban Institute that concluded there were 307,000 illegal immigrant children enrolled in the state's public schools.
Martin also added an estimate of 597,000 U.S.-born children whose parents are illegal immigrants arriving at a total of 1,022,000 children. Multiplying the number of children by the estimated $7,577 the state spends on average per pupil, the study arrived at the $7.7 billion figure.
Including the number of U.S.-born children in the study is one of the reasons pro-immigrant groups said the study is biased.
"I think FAIR is without doubt an extremist organization that tries to portray itself as a mainstream group," said Christian Ramirez, director of the San Diego office of the American Friends Service Committee, an advocate group for legal and illegal immigrants.
The study's author defended the report, saying that the children were born in the United States as a result of their parents' illegal entry into the country.
"In no way does the report identify them as different kinds of citizens, because they would not have been born in the U.S. had their parents not come into the country illegally," Martin said.
To arrive at the cost of providing health care to illegal immigrants, the federation's study used an earlier 2000 analysis of health expenses paid by border counties that concluded the state spent $908 million on medical care for immigrants.
Martin said he adjusted the 2000 figure for increases in the population and inflation on the cost of providing health care and estimated that the state will spend about $1.4 billion in 2004.
The report also estimated that the state will spend another $1.4 billion to jail the 48,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons. California is compensated by the federal government to offset the cost of housing this population, but the federal payments were a fraction, about $111 million, of the total cost, Martin said.
To figure out the contributions that this immigrant population makes in taxes, the federation's study said it adjusted the Urban Institute's study estimates of $732 million for population increases and concluded that they contribute about $1.7 billion in sales, income and property taxes.
A similar study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., and released in August, said that illegal immigrants cost the federal government $10 billion more than they pay in taxes.
The federal government pays about $2.2 billion in medical treatment for uninsured immigrants, according to the report. It pays $1.9 billion in food assistance programs, such as food stamps and school lunches, for low-income families. And it pays $1.4 billion in aid to schools that educate illegal immigrant children.
Martin said states bear most of the cost of illegal immigration.
"State costs are much higher on a per capita basis because of the fact that the largest expenses are medical care and education and those are borne at the local level, not the federal," Martin said.
The federation's full report is at: www.fairus.org.
Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-5426 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.
If there is a thread of commonality among you Open Border Advocates it is your gullibility in believing the pronouncements of politicians because of party identification and loyalties when we are talking about “politicians” here. You think the same government that has been so derelict it its ability to control illegal immigration is going to become suddenly competent in assuring that employers follow the letter of the law regarding some amnesty provisions?
The deal is this: employers seeking cheap Mexican labor run job ads in local newspapers that are specifically tailored to only appeal to new Mexican immigrants via low wages, no benefits, Spanish language requirements. When no Americans apply for the job, the companies proceed to hire the Mexican applicants.
This of course is besides the point that it is not OUR government's job to act as a foreign recruiting agent for corporate America or act in the interests of Mexico. OUR government's job is to act in the INTERESTS of the American People and to protect this country from things like INVASIONS.
Without an employee matching plan the government has no effective way to see that is enforced, or to make sure that immigrants in the program really have jobs.
Like I said, our government can't even monitor and track the 15mm or so illegal aliens already here. Hell they don’t even know who they are. Do you think the Gov is going to be more “effective” when millions more flood the country?
You seem to be able to give no reasons why Bush would be pushing his plan. You seem to think that he's being completely irrational. Maybe you should consider that his plan seems irrational because you're ignoring what his plan says.
Let me put it this way: Bush's ideas of borders and sovereignty--for whatever reason--are radically different than the majority of Americans. Draw your own conclusion.
Gee, I just wonder how many employers wouldn't be "willing" to advertise a job at a pay rate much lower than an average TAXPAYER needs to subsist knowing full well that he can easily find a "willing" illegal to fill the position. What employer wouldn't be "willing" to slowly get rid of his American workers in order to hire illegals knowing full well that he'll be able to EVADE numerous payroll related taxes that would normally be paid by those who employ Americans. To top it all he can now save numerous $ on co. provided healthcare and any other benefits because thanks to our sell-outs in Wash. the taxpayers now get subsidize scumbag employers such as this......what a deal!
How friggin' stupid does Bush et al think we are out here in flyover country? How naive does one have to be to follow this line of continuing BS coming from these "alleged" leaders who insist on screwing us every chance they get?
My comment would have been... why should the tax payers have to foot the bill for employers who are, in turn, making great profit on the backs of the illegals while the American Taxpayers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet are footing the cost of putting a roof over the heads of the children of illegals, educating the kids, feeding the kids, medical care for their kids? These "cheap" employers should be footing the cost for their greed.
The jobs that we're talking about are mainly for unskilled labor.
You're not going to earn $20 an hour picking vegetables.
Those kinds of jobs are either going to be low paying, or the companies are going to go out of business because retailers will import the products from outside the country.
If you want to keep businesses from relocating to China, you need to give them a source of labor that is inexpensive enough that they can stay in business.
I grew up watching steel mills around my hometown close and people lose their jobs because we couldn't compete in that industry. The whole time the workers blamed the companies for being too greedy, while the companies were losing money.
The companies got smart in several cases and sold the companies to the employees who thought for some reason that they'd make all that money their union bosses were telling them the company owners were making. Instead the steel mills went under and they lost their life's savings.
How many times do we have to learn that if the market won't bear the price that we have to charge to make products in the US, the companies will go under?
We aren't losing jobs when immigrants take those jobs. We're saving the jobs of some Americans who work at those companies, and keeping those businesses in the us, where the workers spend their wages here and contribute to our economy.
Will there be some companies that try and underpay employees and exploit them. Sure, there always is. However, if better trained employees are worth the money, they'll put those companies out of business. That's how a free market works.
How can you be a closed border advocate when you support Bush's Amnesty, which will legalize millions of illegal aliens (as millions of law-abiding legal immigrants wait in line for years) and create a tidal wave of millions more with employer/employee matching?
Our immigration problem didn't occur due to incompetence; it came about as a result of deliberate subversion of the immigration laws by politicians.
On this I agree. And I'll add the cheap labor lobby that buys off our politicians.
So your argument is that the government is completely incompetent and can't be reformed, so Bush's plan won't work. If that's the case, why do you think any plan will work? Should we just all give up now?
Nice strawman there. My argument is that it is wrong to award Amnesty to those who invade our country with impunity, break our laws, burden American Taxpayers, displace American Workers, jump ahead of prospective immigrants that follow the rules and patiently wait for years to LEGALLY come to America.
Further, every single Amnesty program our government has enacted has ended up as an unmitigated disaster that has led to more illegal immigration-despite promises to the contrary.
Where our government does do an credible job, and always have, is in the areas of defense and law enforcement. The BP folks who enforce our immigration laws and protect our borders do an outstanding job when they are allowed to do it...which is largely not the case today.
You aren't making an argument. You'll just telling tales of doom and gloom.
No, it's called telling it like it is and what will happen if a new Amnesty is enacted.
Why do you think there's a form of amnesty built into the plan? It's to get those already here to become documented. The guest worker plan is intended to provide workers to fill the jobs exist, but American workers don't want. Right now those jobs are being filled by illegal aliens.
Americans, for better than 200 years, with few exceptions, did most of that work that Americans supposedly won’t do today. What's changed? Well, with so many employers hiring illegal aliens, wages have plunged to the point that few Americans can support themselves, much less a family on those wages. You have to ask yourself, how did America ever become the greatest, most prosperous country in the world without needing a massive contingent of illegal aliens?
Illegal immigration is too huge of an problem to just spend our time hiding under our tinfoil hats and proclaiming the evils of the federal government.
You better believe it is a huge problem and Bush's answer is to make it worse by rewarding illegal immigration. No tinfoil hats here. Anyone that lives in or near a major city can readily see the degradation that Illegal Immigration has wrought on America--particularly in the SW. You yourself admit the subversion of our politicians in this regard. IMO, this disaster is only going to get worse until the politicians responsible are thrown out of office.
Something needs to be done against it now, not after we get done squabbling about perceived differences of opinion.
The solution is the simple concept of applying the laws we already have on the books and a dedication to see it through. That means the rigorous enforcement of our immigration laws particularly on employers of illegals, the expeditious deportation of illegals when their status becomes known, removing the Illegals from welfare and greatly expanding BP resources.
That will do it...and it does not require kicking down doors and massive round ups. If America still needs reasonable numbers for certain jobs then open it up to LEGAL immigration.
Sure you like koolaid. It's the rest of the posters who aren't buying that RNC hack flavor you're selling.
Hola mis gringos!
They are supposed to be being BUSTED for hiring these creeple people!!! Walmart is the only outfit to be charged with anything since the latest law was passed!!!
No wonder employers are becoming scofflaws about this!!!
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???
Bwahahahahahaaaa!
Statistics 101!
...."California's nearly 3 million illegal immigrants".....
...."More than two-thirds of the estimated 340,000 agriculture workers in California are noncitizens, most of whom are believed to be illegal immigrants,".....
OK, so 225,000 illegals are farm workers, or 7.5% of them. So, what do the other 2,775,000 illegals do? Why not mention their occupation, or non-work status?
...." the state will spend another $1.4 billion to jail the 48,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons. California is compensated by the federal government to offset the cost of housing this population, but the federal payments were a fraction, about $111 million, of the total cost.
So, $1.5 bil for 48,000 prisoners. That's $31,250 incremental cost per prisoner, per year. Big number! Get a school bus and send them home!
...."there are about 1 million children of illegal immigrant parents in California, or about 15 percent of the state's K-12 school enrolled population. The estimate is based on a 1994 study by the Urban Institute that concluded there were 307,000 illegal immigrant children enrolled in the state's public schools".....
So school population is up by 693,000 illegal children in ten years. As the earlier stat. indicated that there are 3 million illegals, and there is 1 million illegal students, the family size should be about three. So, the 693k increase in school population would indicate that 1,386,000 adults crossed the border in ten years, or an average of 139k per year, or 375 illegal adults a day entered California. Does that sound reasonable??
Illegals are a huge problem, but the statistics don't necessarily make sense!
That is what they want us to believe...
The friendship only goes one way...
No reciprocation. Can you go down there and buy a home? No, but they can come here and be handed the moon.
...and they resent us! LOL!!
farmfriend... when you gonna git alla them farmers ta qwit hirin alla them Rio waders, huh? (snart!) They needs ta invest in them tamater pickin rowbots, right???
They resent us because they look at us as we stole this country from them. This nation was for the most part uninhabited. American Indians resided as nomads,(again mostly). The Spanish explorers, not Mexicans came here and made settlements, and set up the Missions. They claim something that is false. Just because they believe the lies their government tells them.
They are mistaken.
http://www.usapac.us/
This political action committee was started to support candidates who are willing to address the problem of illegal immigration. The group was started in response to the following case, where an activist judge refused to convict criminals because of their status as an illegal immigrant:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138465,00.html
The USA Political Action Committee requests your help in addressing this issue. Visit the website, and please sign up for the newsletter.
http://www.usapac.us/
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