Posted on 03/11/2015 7:11:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new study by the American Action Forum estimates that deporting every illegal immigrant, and keeping new ones from entering the country would take 20 years and cost taxpayers between $420 billion and $619 billion total. Averaging those lower and upper estimates, deporting every illegal immigrant and enforcing current immigration laws would cost about $26 billion annually.
For comparison, the Department of State had a budget of $27 billion in 2014. NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and welfare for needy families (TANF) all receive less than $20 billion in the federal budget. Food stamps cost almost three times more than what complete deportation and enforcement would cost, while the Department of Veterans Affairs budget is almost six times higher.
Still, the annual cost of complete deportation and enforcement would pale in comparison to the cost of entitlements, making it less than one percent of federal spending $851 billion was spent on Social Security in 2014, with Medicare receiving $512 billion.
The $200 billion difference in taxpayer cost estimates depends on how the government apprehends illegal immigrants. The cost of apprehension ranges from $104 billion to $304 billion. Regardless, the $316 billion cost of enforcement outweighs the cost of deportation. In addition to apprehension, the total cost of deportation is boosted by detention, legal processing and transportation.
In addition to the government cost, there are economic costs to consider as well. These costs are not reflected in the aforementioned costs to taxpayers, but are large enough to be worthy of concern.
Complete deportation and enforcement would cost the economy more than $1.5 trillion over 20 years, with 11 million fewer people in the labor force. Those are percent cuts of 5.7 and 6.4 percent, respectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
I bet I can do it for a LOT less money than that. Give me a mere 400 billion and don’t interfere. Let me keep the change.
Oldplayer
Mass deportation isn’t needed....a law making it illegal to hire an illegal alien would force the illegals to self deport. This whole argument is BS...the dems. don’t want future voters and welfare recipients to be deported!!!
I would imagine the savings in school taxes alone would offset any deportation costs.
But it’s a one time expenditure. You take the charge against earnings this quarter and lower the dividend in the next quarter..
Nailed it. And that’s why most of the national GOP wants amnesty.
The answer is right on the chart. Get the $26 billion from reductions to food stamps, welfare and WIC for illegals and their anchor babies. For good measure take a good chunk out of the EPA,IRS and dept. of education. Confiscate their illegal gains and we might even end up with a surplus to pay off the debt. The only downside would be the glut of used Honda civics causing a price drop.
Just use Mexico’s immigration laws ... they’ll self deport. Deny them rights to be here ...
Why spend the money?
I own a business. When I hire folks, I use e-verify to make sure that, at least in the government's eyes, they're legal. It's the safest way for me to operate. If it turns out I've hired an illegal, it's the government's mistake, and I'm free from liability.
If you make e-verify mandatory, or close to it, and you combine that with stepped-up enforcement against employers of illegals, offers of employment for illegals will shrink dramatically. These folks are here illegally because there are enough folks willing to hire them and look the other way, or pay them off the books or under the table, to provide economic opportunity for them.
Increase the cost of breaking the law to the EMPLOYER, and the supply of work available for illegals will decline. And they will buy their own damned bus tickets and deport themselves. We know this is true, because we had an outflow, a net reduction, in the number of illegals in the first part of the last recession, as there were no job opportunities for anyone, legal or otherwise.
Why pay for that which we can have for free?
sitetest
Most of that article is BS. It would not take 20 years to deport the majority of illegals. As soon as the govt announced they were rounding them up half would head for the border on their own. Nobody says we have to do this anyway.
Cutting off the goodies/freebies will send most of them home on their own anyway. If they can’t a job a drivers license or any kind of welfare they will go home.
Yes.
But it's not necessary.
Cut off SNAP, TANF, WIC, free medical care, in-state tuition, driver licenses, etc. to illegal aliens, and many will deport themselves. Many more won't bother coming in the first place.
I know they won't all self deport. Encouraging them to do so reduces the size, complexity, and COST of deporting the obdurate. It also reduces the size, complexity, and COST of all the welfare programs that are attracting many illegals in the first place.
And the administration should be required to do an environmental impact study on that policy.
I don’t believe it.
“In fact, without the freebies, let em stay and work!”
I would suspect that people who followed the law to move here, people waiting to move here legally, people who have lost jobs due to an illegal directly taking their job, and people who have suffered lower wages due to illegals flooding the market and driving down wages, may not be so keen on letting them stay here and work.
I read some time ago that Eisenhower began deporting illegals and sending them to the most Southern part of Mexico that could land a plane. He only had to deport a fraction because the rest got the message. And, he reduced the number of illegals in the U.S. at that time dramatically.
I don't know if this is still the case, but the Dominican Republic used to restrict Visas for citizens, in that whole families were not issued visas. For example, we have a friend who travelled to the US quite frequently, but was not allowed to bring his children, as the country wanted him to have incentive to return.
Let them deport themselves
An easier solution is to make it a felony to hire an illegal alien or allow them to have a bank account and make it a mandatory 20 year prison sentence followed by a $1,000,000 fine per instance.
The illegals will shortly self-deport all on their own.
There probably wouldn’t be that many that would stay if the laws were enforced and the freebies cut off.
You start by deporting one person at a time - starting with the most violent and repeat offenders.
From there you move down the list. At some point do you give a waiver to the law-abiding and upstanding? - Of course you do.
That is a conversation that you can put off until many years down the line and many deported criminals and scumbags later.
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