Which costs more: Trump's border wall or illegal aliens and Why the Left is so vehemently against it!
U.S. taxpayers suffer $100 billion annual burden from influx
Read up!
Before you do, If you have a sane and rational mind you should ask the simple question "WHY" the "LEFT" wants illegal aliens in our country!
It Most certainly is not because they identify with the plight of the migrant class. Those mostly lower level of Society with less than a high school education ... who do not speak English and have no idea of American Culture or Constitution or Laws. Then why do you think they want them here ?
Its so plain to see.. Its right in front of you if you rationalize it. Its VOTES. The left needs "Voting blocks" .. from the 1950's The Low IQ just enfranchised desegregated Ghetto Blacks with little or no worthwhile education who despised "white America" were a guaranteed segment of the vote for the Democrat/Left. As time went by and as the Black ghetto dwellers diminished in numbers... and a stronger middle class of blacks emerged they realized they could not count on a subservient grateful Black Underclass to provide the assured 98% Democrat Vote group the Blacks had become.
The Democrat/Left needed a new group to assure them of votes over the long haul. The Asians like the Chinese and Asian Indians and The Far Easterners could not be counted on because they were more ambitious and hard working and Entrepreneurial. The Democrat/Left needed the Migrants, the poor and those who would be grateful for their help to come to America and expand the Ghetto class that was being depleted. So slowly the Democrat/Left abandoned their defense of the low skilled, lowest rung worker.. the LEGAL BLACK AND HISPANIC Workers and began a campaign to bring in as many Migrants and Illegals as they could into America through a range of schemes, including Drivers Licenses for Illegals, Free Education, Free Food, Sanctuary Cities and States, Free Health Care for Illegals.. all in exchange for their votes over the long haul.
This is why they are for "open borders" . This assures the continuous flow of illegals who will be the future of the Democrat/Left "Vote Bank" .
Who Controls the Democrat/Left? Its a Group of Rich Socialist and Uber Wealthy Oligarch Types who would like the end of America as we know it ... A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.. where All men are equal under God and Law. If they get their way, America becomes a Super Rich Socialist Oligarchy where there will be the Super Rich who each will control segments of the economy and infrastructure employing a worker class cadre who will be guaranteed a "Living wage" and medical care as long as you toe the Oligarch line and and useful to them.
Its been done before and it has failed so many times before.. but it has never been tried on a Country as wealthy and resource rich as America. We have it all. So an Oligarchy like this could succeed and prosper for 300 Years by Conservative estimates.
They will control the population, build their own walls and fences once they achieved their goals.. by which time they hope to have disarmed the population and they will be able to enforce their goal of this new form of Government on America.
That is why they find Donald Trump and this wall so dangerous to them. Its the empowerment of "WE THE PEOPLE" that they fear. They want to move us to a "Yes Massa" mentality. Only this time the "Massas" are the Oligarchs and their thought police.
Now that you have an understanding of the possible future...Know that a Border wall is a lot cheaper than allowing a Migrant Invasion..... if one is looking to protect America from becoming a Socialist Oligarchy. If the goal is to move America in to this new form of Government... the last thing you want is a wall impeding the generous flow of guaranteed votes over the long haul.
The wall represents a stoppage of the progress the Left has made and if it works it has the potential to reverse their plan that has been in the works since the 1980's.
The findings of this analysis show that if a border wall stopped a small fraction of the illegal immigrants who are expected to come in the next decade, the fiscal savings from having fewer illegal immigrants in the country would be sufficient to cover the costs of the wall. This analysis takes the likely education level of illegal border-crossers and applies fiscal estimates developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) for immigrants by education level. NAS calculates the future fiscal balance immigrants create — taxes paid minus costs. NAS reports fiscal balances as "net present values", which places a lower value on future expenditures than on current expenditures.
Based on the NAS data, illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden of approximately $74,722 during their lifetimes, excluding any costs for their U.S.-born children. If a border wall stopped between 160,000 and 200,000 illegal crossers — 9 to 12 percent of those expected to successfully cross in the next decade — the fiscal savings would equal the $12 to $15 billion cost of the wall.1
Among the findings:
- There is agreement among researchers that illegal immigrants overwhelmingly have modest levels of education — most have not completed high school or have only a high school education.
- There is also agreement that immigrants who come to America with modest levels of education create significantly more in costs for government than they pay in taxes.
- A recent NAS study estimated the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) of immigrants by education. Averaging the cost estimates from that study and combining them with the education levels of illegal border-crossers shows a net fiscal drain of $74,722 per illegal crosser.2
- The above figures are only for the original illegal immigrants and do not include any costs for their U.S.-born descendants. If we use the NAS projections that include the descendants, the fiscal drain for border-crossers grows to $94,391 each.
- If a border wall prevented 160,000 to 200,000 illegal crossings (excluding descendants) in the next 10 years it would be enough to pay for the estimated $12 to $15 billion costs of the wall.
- Newly released research by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) done for the Department of Homeland Security indicates that 170,000 illegal immigrants crossed the border successfully without going through a port of entry in 2015.3 While a significant decline in crossings from a decade ago, it still means that there may be 1.7 million successful crossings in the next decade. If a wall stopped just 9 to 12 percent of these crossings it would pay for itself.
- If a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion — several times the wall's cost.
Important Caveats and Observations About These Estimates
- In addition to crossing the border surreptitiously, aliens join the illegal population primarily by overstaying a temporary visa. A southern border wall would not address this part of the illegal flow.
- A large share of the net fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is at the state and local level, not the federal level. The costs of building the wall will be borne by the federal government.
- To create its long-term fiscal estimates for immigrants by education level, the NAS uses the concept of "net present value" (NPV). This concept, which is commonly used by economists, has the effect of reducing the size of the net fiscal drain that unskilled immigrants will create in the future. The NAS does this because costs or benefits years from now are valued less in economics relative to more immediate costs. But this means the actual net lifetime fiscal cost of illegal border-crossers, given their education levels, is possibly $140,000 to $150,000 each in their lifetimes if the NPV concept is not used.4
Methodology
The Importance of Educational Attainment. There is a good deal of agreement among researchers that the education level of immigrants is a key factor in determining their net fiscal impact. As a recent study by the NAS states, the education level of arriving immigrants is one of the "important determinants" of their fiscal impact.5 This finding is similar to a 1997 study by NAS that also examined the fiscal impact of immigrants.6 This conclusion also is mirrored by a 2013 study from the Heritage Foundation. Referring to the education level of household heads, Heritage concluded that "Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors." But at the same time, "Poorly educated households, whether immigrant or U.S.-born, receive far more in government benefits than they pay in taxes."7 My own research has come to the same conclusion.8 The reason for this is straightforward: Those with modest levels of education tend to earn low wages in the modern American economy, and as a result tend to make low tax payments and often qualify for means-tested programs. The less educated are a net fiscal drain, on average, regardless of legal status or if they were born in the United States or a foreign country.Education Levels of Illegal Immigrants. In terms of the educational attainment of illegal immigrants, there is a good deal of evidence that they have modest levels of education, much lower than native-born Americans or legal immigrants. The Heritage study discussed above estimated that, on average, illegal immigrants have 10 years of schooling. My own analysis for all illegal immigrants (visa overstayers and illegal border-crossers together) is that 54 percent of adults have not completed high school, 25 percent have only a high school degree, and 21 percent have education beyond high school.9 The Pew Research Center has estimated that of all adult illegal immigrants, 47 percent have not completed high school, 27 percent have only a high school education, 10 percent have some college, and 15 percent have a bachelor's degree or more.10 These figures are for all illegal immigrants, including those who overstayed a temporary visa, not just illegal border-crossers.
Education Level of Border-Crossers. Since the border wall would by definition only impact the flow of those who cross the border illegally and not those who overstay a temporary visa or are smuggled into the country, it is necessary to estimate the education level of illegal border-crossers separately. Illegal crossers tend to be the least educated component of illegal immigration because they are mostly from Latin America and because more educated foreign nationals wishing to come to the United States can often qualify for a temporary visa, which they can then overstay.11 For example, a person with few years of schooling, a low paying job, and no property in their home country is not likely to qualify for a tourist visa or other temporary visitor visa. American consulates overseas would typically deny such a person a tourist visa (B2) or business traveler visa (B1) because the assumption is that such persons may be coming to stay permanently. They are "intending immigrants" in the terminology of the consular service. This is especially true for the primary sending countries of illegal immigration, which are all developing countries.12 A more educated person is much more likely to qualify for a tourist visa, or for that matter a guestworker visa or a student visa, which they can then overstay.
Because illegal border-crossers are overwhelmingly from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, we use the education level of illegal immigrants from Latin America to estimate border-crossers' education profile. My analysis of illegal immigrants from Latin America indicates that they have the following education: 57 percent, less than high school; 27 percent, high school only; 10 percent, some college or associate's degree; 4 percent, bachelor's only; and 2 percent, more than a bachelor's.13 These educational levels provide a baseline for estimating the fiscal impact of illegal crossers. However, as we will see, even if we use somewhat different estimates of education, the fiscal impact of illegal border-crossers is still large and negative.
Fiscal Impact by Education Level. The 2016 NAS study mentioned above projected the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) of immigrants by education. These estimates are expressed as a net present value. This is a concept used in fiscal studies to express the sum total of costs or benefits over long periods of time — in this case a lifetime. NPV represents the fiscal balance (taxes paid minus costs) if we had to spend the money today. Later in this report we discuss in more detail the concept of net present value, both its usefulness and it shortcomings.
In addition to the original immigrant, the NAS study also has separate estimates for the descendents of immigrants over 75 years.14 In this analysis we focus only on the fiscal impact of the original immigrant. The tax payments and costs created by the descendants of immigrants over 75 years are speculative, whereas the estimates for the original immigrants are more grounded in current reality. The NAS study does not report separate estimates for illegal and legal immigrants. Rather, they simply estimate tax payments and expenditures on immigrants as they appear in Census Bureau data, primarily the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. As result, the education estimates from the NAS are for both legal and illegal immigrants.
The NAS fiscal projections include eight different scenarios, each with different assumptions about future spending, tax rates, and the future flow of immigrants. It is not entirely clear what set of fiscal assumptions are best, and the NAS study itself does not identify the one best scenario. In Table 1 we simply take all eight scenarios and average them together by education level.
It should be pointed out that in every scenario from the NAS, as shown in Table 1, immigrants without a high school education are a significant net fiscal drain during their lifetimes. That is, they pay less in taxes than they use in services. Those with only a high school education are a net fiscal drain in seven of the eight scenarios. In contrast, the most educated immigrants, those with at least a bachelor's degree, are a net fiscal benefit in all eight scenarios.
Calculating the Fiscal Impact of Border-Crossers. The first column of Table 2 reports the average fiscal effect of immigrants by education level, taken directly from the bottom of Table 1. Column 2 in Table 2 shows the education level of illegal border-crossers as discussed above. Column 3 multiplies the average cost by the share of border-crossers who fall into that educational category, and the bottom of column 3 adds up the costs to give a weighted average. This means that using the NAS average fiscal costs of immigrants by education and assuming the educational distribution of illegal border-crossers shown in the table means that the lifetime net fiscal drain per illegal crosser is $97,759. However, for reasons discussed below we think this figure somewhat overstates the fiscal costs.
As already mentioned, the NAS fiscal analysis includes all immigrants — both legal and illegal. Although illegal immigrants do access some welfare programs and create other significant costs, it is still the case that less-educated illegal immigrants create smaller net fiscal costs than less-educated legal immigrants. Unfortunately, the NAS study has very little discussion of how legal and illegal immigrants differ in their fiscal impact. The study does state: "Unauthorized immigrants as a group may have a more positive fiscal impact than authorized immigrants."15 We agree with this conclusion and so we adjust the fiscal drain created by less-educated illegal immigrants so it is less than that of less-educated legal immigrants.
To estimate the adjustment factor, we use the 2013 study by the Heritage Foundation mentioned above. That study has estimates for immigrants by education and legal status.16 While adjusting has the effect of reducing the fiscal costs for less-educated illegal immigrants, it also reduces the fiscal benefits for immigrants who are more educated. This reflects the fact that while higher-skilled illegal immigrants are assumed to create a fiscal surplus, they often are unable to find work commensurate with their education level because of their legal status and so have to work at lower paying jobs. As a result they do not have as large a positive impact on public coffers as their legal counterparts. Since there are relatively few illegal border crossers in the higher education categories, adjusting for the most educated crossers makes only a modest difference to the results.
The right lower corner of Table 2 shows that the fiscal costs of border-crossers, including the adjustment, is $74,722. Adjusting does significantly reduce the fiscal costs — by 23.6 percent. However, it is still the case that every 100,000 individuals who cross the border illegally cost taxpayers nearly $7.5 billion. It must be remembered that these are the present values of the lifetime net fiscal costs (taxes paid minus services used) for illegal border-crossers only, with no costs for their children or descendants.
Do Net Present Values Make Sense? Net present values are created by reducing or "discounting" costs or benefits in the future based on how long in the future they take place. Page 325 of the NAS study states that they used a 3 percent annual discount rate, which is common in this kind of analysis. So, for example, the fiscal balance (whether a net drain or benefit) an immigrant creates two years after arrival is reduced by about 6 percent. After 10 years the amount is reduced by about 26 percent, and at 20 years the discount is 45 percent. This means events that occur further in the future have a smaller impact on the total costs or benefits today. Comparing the net present value fiscal costs of illegal border-crossers to the costs of a wall can be seen as reasonable because the wall has to be paid for up front while the fiscal drain accrues over time. Using an NPV makes the costs of the wall and illegal border-crossers more comparable.
The primary downside of using NPVs for fiscal estimates is that it masks the size of future outlays created by less-educated illegal border-crossers. For example, using a 3 percent annual discount rate, as the NAS study does, means that if an illegal immigrant creates a net fiscal burden of $10,000 in the 23rd year of the projection, it will be reported and added to the total NPV as only $4,900 because of discounting. Without discounting, the actual outlays associated with illegal immigrants are much larger. This fact is worth keeping in mind when looking at the NPVs.
Making Different Assumptions. There are four key variables in the above calculations. The first is whether to include the children of illegal crossers. Many of the descendants of less-educated immigrants struggle, earning low wages and using a good deal in public services. If we use the NAS study's estimates that include the progeny of immigrants, the fiscal drain increases to $94,391. But, as already mentioned, the tax payments and costs created by the descendants of immigrants in the NAS study go out 75 years and are speculative. Therefore it makes more sense to focus on the original immigrants only.
The second question is what fiscal scenario from the NAS study should be used. (All the scenarios are shown in Table 1 of this report.) Scenario 1 makes assumptions that are most favorable to the fiscal impact of immigrants. If we use only this scenario, then the net fiscal costs drop significantly, to $20,092 for each illegal crosser. While significantly less than our estimates shown in Table 2, which reflect all the NAS scenarios averaged together, the best possible fiscal scenario for immigrants still shows a substantial net cost that would equal $2 billion for every 100,000 illegal border-crossers. This reflects the fact that even if one makes very favorable assumptions about immigrants it is still the case that less-educated immigrants, which account for most illegal crossers, are a large fiscal drain.
By way of contrast, if we use Scenario 8 from the NAS study, which makes the least favorable fiscal assumptions about immigrants, the net fiscal impact of each border-crosser increases dramatically — to $125,141, or $12.5 billion for every 100,000 illegal immigrants. This is a good deal more than when all NAS scenarios are averaged together, as reported in Table 2. But what is important to note is that no matter what NAS scenario is used, there is a significant lifetime net fiscal deficit for illegal border-crossers.
The third key assumption in our estimates is the education level of illegal border-crossers. As already discussed, there is widespread agreement that illegal immigrants are a relatively unskilled population. Further, illegal crossers are the least educated component of illegal immigration because they are mostly from Latin America and because, as already noted, more educated foreign nationals can often qualify for a temporary visa, which they can then overstay. The poor and less educated from Latin America typically have no other realistic option for getting into the United States than surreptitiously crossing the southern border.
If we assume that border-crossers are as educated as Pew estimated for all illegal immigrants, not just border-crossers, the average fiscal cost would still be very large — $57,778.17 While somewhat less than our estimated cost of $74,722, it would still mean that each group of 100,000 illegal border-crossers creates a net fiscal cost of more than $5.8 billion during their lifetimes. Again, Pew's figures show that about three-quarters of illegal immigrants have less than a high school education or only a high school education, and this makes them a large fiscal drain.
Finally, there is the question of the difference between the net fiscal impact of all immigrants (legal and illegal) by education level, which is what the NAS estimated, and the fiscal impact of illegal border-crossers. In Table 2 we adjust the fiscal impact of illegal border-crossers significantly, reducing the costs of less-educated illegal immigrants relative to immigrants of the same education by almost 24 percent. If we more than doubled this reduction to 50 percent for all educational categories, the net fiscal costs of border-crossers would still be $48,879. Under a 50 percent reduction, each 100,000 illegal immigrants still create a cost of nearly $5 billion, a very sizeable impact.18 Like the other assumptions, the adjustment factor matters, but the education level of illegal crossers drives the results and the fiscal balance is decidedly negative.
Overall, different assumptions can affect the results. But because the overwhelming share of illegal border-crossers have not completed high school, or have only a high school education, it would require highly implausible assumptions to avoid a substantial net fiscal drain from those who cross the border illegally. In short, illegal border-crossers are a large net fiscal drain because of their education levels and this fact drives the results. Therefore, a border wall would pay for itself even if it only stops a modest fraction of those expected to successfully cross in the next decade.
End Notes
1 There is no one definitive estimate of what a system of barriers, fencing, and walls will cost. The cost depends heavily on what type of system is constructed and the length of that system. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said Congress would appropriate $12 to $15 billion for the wall, though he gave no time frame. As the senator is in a key position of authority to determine appropriations, his estimate seems a useful starting point for estimating what the federal government will spend on the wall. See Kate Drew, "This is what Trump's border wall could cost", CNBC, January 26, 2017.2 Please see the methodology section of this report for an explanation of how we adjust downward the NAS fiscal cost estimates, which are for both legal and illegal immigrants, to reflect the cost for illegal border-crossers only.
3 John Whitley et. al., "Assessing Southern Border Security", Institute for Defense Analysis, May 2016, p. iv, Summary Table. It should be noted that some share of the 1.7 million border-crosers expected in the next 10 years may be people who successfully cross the border more than once. The border study does not have an estimate for the number of individuals who might cross successfully more than one time over a 10-year period. But if that number was perhaps a quarter of the total, then the number of unique border-crossers over a 10-year period would equal about 1.275 million. If this is correct, then a wall would have to stop 13 to 16 percent of illegal crossers in the next 10 years. Alternatively, if 41 percent are the same person successfully crossing more than one time in a 10-year period and the total number of unique crossers was one million, then a border wall would need to stop 16 to 20 percent of crossers to pay for itself.
4 The NAS does not report the fiscal impact of immigrants with and without the reduction in costs, referred to as discounting by economists. However, if one assumes a 45- or 50-year lifespan for illegal immigrants after they arrive and that the fiscal drain is evenly spread throughout their time in the United States, then the actual average fiscal costs are likely between $140,000 to $150,000 — perhaps twice what the costs are when the NPV is used. It must be emphasized that our undiscounted cost estimate is only an educated guess and the actual costs could be higher or lower. Later in this report we discuss in more detail the advantages and disadvantages of using NPV to think about fiscal issues.
5 Francine D. Blau and Christopher Mackie, eds., The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, September 22, 2016, p. 286.
6 James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1997.
7 Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer", Heritage Foundation, May 6, 2013, p. v.
8 Steven A. Camarota, "The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget", Center for Immigration Studies, August 2004.
9 Steven A. Camarota, "Immigrants in the United States, 2010: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population", Center for Immigration Studies, 2012, p. 69.
10 Jeffrey S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn, "A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States", Pew Hispanic Center, April 14, 2009, Figure 16, p. 11.
11 A study done for DHS by the Institute for Defense Analysis found that the overwhelming majority of successful border crossers are from Latin America. See John Whitley et. al., "Assessing Southern Border Security", Institute for Defense Analysis, May 2016, p. 24.
12 Less-educated people from developed countries can often enter the United States as tourists without a visa under the Visa Waiver Program. Developing countries are not typically part of the program.
13 This is based on analysis of illegal immigrants identified in the public-use files of the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement by the Center for Immigration Studies.
14 Both the estimates for the original immigrant and descendants are found on in Table 8-12 on p. 341 of the study. Francine D. Blau and Christopher Mackie, eds., The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, September 22, 2016, page 286.
15 Ibid., p. 280, end note number 2. See end note 16 in this report for a discussion of the fiscal costs of illegal vs. all immigrants (legal and illegal).
16 The Heritage Foundation reports the average fiscal impact for illegal immigrant and legal immigrant households by education level. They also report the number of households by education and legal status. With this information it is a relatively straightforward matter to calculate the average fiscal impact of all immigrant households (legal and illegal) by education. We then divide this amount by the estimated costs for illegal households by education to create an adjustment factor. So, for example, among illegal high school dropout households the net fiscal impact is -$20,485 a year, and for households headed by a legal immigrant who is a dropout the drain is a good deal more: -$36,993. In Heritage's estimate, illegal immigrants create a net fiscal cost that is about 55 percent that of the burden created by households headed by high school dropout legal immigrants. But this is not the proper comparison, as the NAS estimates are for all immigrants, not just legal immigrants. Given the number of households Heritage reports, the fiscal impact for all immigrant households (legal and illegal) headed by a dropout must be -$30,294. As this equals .676 of the estimated costs of illegal dropout households reported in the Heritage study, this becomes the adjustment factor. We do the same for the other educational categories. As the Heritage study does not show separate estimates for those with only a bachelor's degree and those with a graduate education, we use the same adjustment factor for both. Taken together, this approach reduces the net fiscal drain of illegal immigrants by almost 24 percent.
It is possible that this adjustment factor may be too large and that the costs of illegal immigration are actually greater. A study published by the Center for Immigration Studies in 2016 showed that the average illegal immigrant household creates 91 percent of the welfare costs of the average immigrant household (both legal and illegal). See Jason Richwine, "The Cost of Welfare Use By Immigrant and Native Households", Center for Immigration Studies, May 2016. However, welfare is only one cost and the Richwine study did not take into account tax payments. In a 2004 study of the federal budget, I found that the average household headed by an illegal immigrant created a fiscal drain equal to 79 percent that of households headed by legal immigrants with the same level of education. Relative to all immigrants (legal and illegal immigrants together), illegal immigrants created a fiscal cost equal to 88 percent that of legal immigrants, again controlling for education. However, the 2004 study was only for federal expenditures and tax payments. That study did not include costs and tax payments at the state and local level. See Steven A. Camarota, "The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget", Center for Immigration Studies, August 2004. Later in this report we discuss the effect of using a different adjustment factor.
17 As will be recalled from the discussion above, Pew estimated that 47 percent of all illegal immigrants, not just illegal border-crossers, have not completed high school, 27 percent have only a high school education, 10 percent have some college, and 15 percent have a bachelor's or more. To make the estimates match the educational categories in the NAS study, which reports graduate degrees separately, we assume that 10 percent have a bachelor's degree and 5 percent have graduate degrees.
18 This would mean, for example, that the fiscal cost of legal immigrants with the same education would be substantially higher so that the average is what the NAS study reports. In the Census data the NAS study used, immigrants can only be legal or illegal, so the larger the reduction in costs for illegal immigrants, relative to all immigrants, the higher costs legal immigrants must create. Mathematically, the fiscal costs must average to those reported in the NAS study for all immigrants by education level.
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The estimates of the cost of carrying out President Trump’s plan to build a wall on the nation’s southwest border vary, but the fiscal and societal burdens heaped on U.S. citizens for governmental failure to take decisive action on illegal immigration is significantly costlier, border-control activists say.
The organization calculated the per-household ratio based on the $12 billion to $15 billion estimated cost of a border wall that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan jointly offered last week.
“This is about keeping Americans safe,” Ryan said. “We are committed to working with the administration to stop the influx of illegal immigration along the southern border, protect our homeland, and uphold the rule of law.
Based on Conservativet will cost the U.S. $27 billion to $40 billion to carry out the Trump endeavor.
The Federation for Immigration Reform, or FAIR – a nonprofit advocate of limited immigration – says, however, that no matter who pays for the wall, the project ultimately can be viewed as cost effective.
Citing an estimated $100 billion recurring annual burden placed on taxpayers due to the provision of services to illegal aliens and their families, FAIR President Dan Stein said in a recent USA Today op-ed, “Even at the high end of the one-time cost estimate for constructing a wall, in the $15 billion and $25 billion range, the structures are cheap at twice the price.”
A widely cited FAIR report published in 2013 claims illegal immigrants could cost taxpayers $113 billion annually, an amount adjusted to $99 billion after factoring estimated taxes paid by illegals.
President Trump during his election campaign cited the $113 billion FAIR figure, leading to a PolitiFact analysis and several additional analyses and estimates that were less than the FAIR total.
Although PolitiFact acknowledged it’s “difficult to determine exact costs of a population for which only estimates are available” – without attempting to explicitly refute the numbers – it judged Trump’s FAIR-based claim to be “largely false.”
The primary fiscal burden of illegal aliens – $84 billion, in FAIR’s estimate – falls on state and local governments, with the remaining $29 billion outlay coming from the federal government.
The biggest state- and local-level taxpayer burden lies in the provision of public schooling for the children of illegal aliens, since the expense of public education traditionally has fallen on local governments.
With the majority of these students meeting the economic criteria of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, or Title I, program, with those children constituting about 9.7 percent of K-12 enrollees nationwide, “we estimate that about $1.33 billion of this funding is spent on children of illegal aliens,” the report said.
When additionally factoring in the Migrant Education Program ($237 million) and the Title III program ($538 million), the estimated annual cost of education for these children is nearly $2.11 billion.
Medical expenses for illegal aliens comprise about $5.95 billion, factoring emergency medical care ($250 million), fraudulent use of Medicaid ($1.24 billion), Medicaid cost of childbirth ($1.24 billion), Medicaid for children ($1.6 billion) and other Medicaid outlays ($1.6 billion).
Among other fiscal burdens cited in the report are $7.84 billion in Administration of Justice Outlays, whose largest expenditures fall into the categories of Residual Immigration & Customs Enforcement Functions ($2.82 billion) and Detention and Removal ($2.55 billion).
“Criminal and deportable aliens in the hands of [Detention and Removal Office] authorities are either transported to the border – if Mexican – or flown to their homeland,” the report emphasized
“Some Mexicans also are flown to the interior of their country rather than being put across the border where many would be likely to attempt to reenter the United States illegally.”
According to FAIR, Public Assistance Benefits to illegal aliens at the time of its analysis exceeded $4.71 billion when weighing the cost of the Free and Reduced Meal Program ($2.27 billion), Temporary Assistance of Needy Families ($1.03 billion), Child Care and Development Fund ($633 million), and Housing Assistance Programs ($787 million).
WND called the White House to obtain additional information on President Trump’s border-security plan. A Press Office staffer said to submit questions via e-mail. No response was given, however, prior to publication deadline.
The inquiry asked whether current White House cost estimates matched or were comparable to the $12 billion-$15 billion figure offered by House Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell, who publicly expressed support for the border-wall proposal.
“Whatever the Trump administration estimates may be for the border-wall endeavor, what is that cost-estimate based upon? In other words, how exactly was it calculated? Does that calculation include factors such as land-acquisition costs and labor?
WND also asked for a revised estimate if indeed those factors were not included in White House projections. An estimated date of release to Congress of a detailed plan to build the wall was also requested.
Drugs and crime
The Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, views the burden of easy access across burden in terms of murderous Mexican transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs.
The DEA reiterated in its most recent National Drug Threat Assessment, or NDTA, that “Mexican TCOs remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them.”
These TCOs hold broad, territorial influence across large swaths of Mexico to produce and then transport multi-ton quantities of illicit drugs over the border.
Mexican TCO members – many with family ties to “leading cartel figures in Mexico” – enter the U.S. illegally as well as legally, often concealing their operations within densely-populated Mexican-American communities, according to the DEA.
The Mexican TCOs’ control of “lucrative smuggling corridors across the U.S. Southwest Border” enable them to deliver their “poly-drug portfolio” of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana” and other substances to U.S. consumer markets.
The report points out that the violence that has plagued Mexico as a result of the drug cartels has not, with some exceptions, extended across the border into the U.S.
“U.S.-based Mexican TCOs strive to maintain low visibility and generally refrain from inter-cartel violence to avoid law enforcement detection and scrutiny,” it said.
“While there are isolated examples of TCO-connected murders in the United States in past years, particularly along the SWB, they do not represent a significant trend of concern.”
Human carnage
A recent Congressional Research Service, or CRS, report points to slow but steady progress in joint U.S.-Mexican efforts to reform Mexico’s criminal justice, known as the Mérida Initiative, while combating transnational criminal organizations and cross-border drug and human trafficking.
Mexico, however, continues to be “the main foreign supplier to the U.S. market of heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana,” CRS said in its January 2017 report, “U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond.”
“It remains a major transit country for cocaine sold in the United States.”
Additionally, from 2010 to 2015, U.S. seizures of methamphetamine increased 305 percent at the southwest border, while the amount of heroin seized more than doubled, according to the report, which was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.
“Surging U.S. demand has fueled increasing opium cultivation and heroin production in Mexico, as well as drug trafficking-related violence in areas where groups are vying to control production,” the report said.
The George W. Bush Administration in 2007 launched the Mérida Initiative, for which Congress then appropriated more than $2.6 billion from FY2008 to FY2016. The FY2017 budget request under Barack Obama included $129 million for the initiative, while a House measure – for which the 114th Congress did not complete action – sought an additional $20 million.
Among the endeavor’s “Four Pillars” is “Creating a 21st Century Border,” which extends some of the initiative’s focus from illegal migration and cross-border crime to the potential risk that cross-border commercial trade poses to the U.S.
“Another issue policymakers may confront regarding the strengthening of the Southwest border is how to prevent the corruption of U.S. and Mexican border officials,” the report suggested.
It noted that 144 employees of Customs & Border Protection, or CBP, from FY2005 to FY2012, “were arrested or indicted for corruption-related activities and 65 percent of them were stationed along the Southwest border.”
CRS acknowledged that the agency has stepped up efforts to increase transparency on the matter, including a 2016 CBP Integrity Advisory Council report that recommended the creation of Border Corruption Task Forces.
“To date, the 21st century border pillar has not directly addressed the issue of corruption,” CRS said in the report.
“Congress may consider whether preventing, detecting, and prosecuting the corruption of border enforcement personnel should be a component of the border programs funded by the Mérida Initiative.”
Despite the efforts of U.S. and Mexican officials via the initiative – and a decade after the Mexican government initiated a military-led crackdown against drug traffickers and organized criminal organizations – “violent crime continues to threaten citizen security and governance in parts of Mexico, including in cities along the U.S. Southwest border.”
The violence, according to the report, “may have claimed more than 100,000 lives since December 2006.”
From the Mexican side of border, there have been threats against Trump’s plan.
A former Mexican government official says that in response, his nation might stop cooperating with the United States in the war against the drug cartels, which would unleash what an analysis has described as “chaos and violence.”
The warning came from Jorge Castaneda Gutman, a former secretary of foreign affairs for Mexico, whose leadership has been in an uproar over Trump’s plan to stop illegal immigration.
In a recent interview, Gutman claimed that the drugs and associated violence are not Mexico’s problem, even though the drug cartels have murdered tens of thousands of Mexicans, beheading many of their victims.
He told CNN that Mexico “has a lot of negotiating chips in this matter … but it also has measures we could take in other areas.”
Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo writes in his “In Mortal Danger” how those in America illegally are demanding the rights granted to citizens.
“For example, the drugs that come through Mexico from South America, or the drugs that are produced here in Mexico all go to the United States,” he said. “This is not our problem.”
Gutman then boasted of his nation’s work with the U.S. but warned it might not last.
“We have been cooperating with the United States for many years on these issues because they’ve asked us to and because we have a friendly, trustful relationship. If that relationship disappears, the reasons for cooperation also disappear,” he said.
At Intellihub, an independent news outlet whose coverage of the secret 2012 Bilderberg meetings became the source of a movie, writer Mac Slavo spelled out the consequences of ending the cooperation.
“[Gutman] suggested that Mexico’s previous cooperation with the U.S. in curbing the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants could end,” he wrote. “Instead, the cartels could be essentially unleashed upon the U.S. – retribution for tough policies on Mexico and other immigrant-producing countries in the Latin American world.”
He said Gutman’s comments confirm the link between the cartels and the Mexican government.
President Trump’s proposal to impose a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods to help pay for his border-wall plan appears to be entirely lawful, according to the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., libertarian think-tank.
Dan Ikenson, director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, acknowledged last month in an analysis of Trump’s proposal might comply with the letter of the law under several statutes.
“The most probable statute is Section 232(b) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which permits the president to impose duties in the event of a ‘national emergency,'” Ikenson said. He pointed out that President Nixon once invoked this statute in 1971, subsequently imposing upon Japanese imports a 10 percent surcharge in response to a “balance of payments crisis” with Japan.
“Trump might claim that the loss of manufacturing jobs or the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico is a national security crisis that justifies his invocation of this law, and imposition of the tariff,” according to Ikenson, who offered his analysis via the Cato at Liberty blog.
Though Trump likely could implement such an action, it remains unclear if the punitive tariff would remain in effect in the long term.
“Whether the action would pass muster in a NAFTA panel or at the WTO is another matter,” Ikenson said. “There has never been such a case – duties imposed to redress a national security crisis – brought to dispute settlement.”
Ikenson, it should be noted, simply assessed the legalities of the tariff in relation to the border-wall plan, and is not supportive of the proposal. Indeed, he said it was unfortunate Trump had the power to impose the discriminatory tariff – and equally unfortunate the president has the will to carry out this border-security action.
“The very idea of building the wall in the first place is a disgrace, but demonizing our neighbors and hatching plans that could subvert the Mexican economy and put another Venezuela on our southern border, is belligerent and potentially disastrous,” he said.
One analyst from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C. think-tank, praised the border-wall plan and accompanying proposed Trump measures to heighten border security as bold and effective.
