US Taxpayers Shoulder Annual Burden of $151 Billion for Illegal Immigration, Study Finds

Illegal immigrants wait outside a Migrant Resource Center to receive food from San Antonio Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2022. Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images

U.S. taxpayers are footing a $151 billion bill each year to cover the cost of illegal immigration, according to a new study published on March 8 by a Washington-based immigration group.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) study concludes that American taxpayers pay around $182 billion annually to provide services and benefits to about 15.5 million illegal immigrants and approximately 5.4 million citizen children of illegal aliens.

However, about $31 billion in taxes are collected from those illegal immigrants, which brings the net cost to $150.7 billion annually.

The 2022 costs represent a 30 percent increase since 2017, when a similar FAIR study estimated that the annual net cost of illegal immigration was $116 billion.

“As America struggles to meet countless societal needs while facing the realities of our staggering $31 trillion national debt, the costs of providing for millions of people who have no legal right to be in the United States continue to grow at an alarming rate,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in a statement accompanying the study.

“To be clear, most of this enormous financial burden has been inflicted on taxpayers by the open borders advocates at every level of government,” Stein added. “Not only is the Biden administration refusing to rein in illegal immigration or remove the people who are breaking our laws, they are promulgating policies that actually encourage more of it while offering new protections and benefits to those who settle here illegally.

“Likewise, a growing number of states and localities create their own costly magnets for illegal aliens by declaring themselves sanctuaries and offering new benefits and services. This has to stop.”

Costs

According to FAIR, the biggest cost is K-12 education for illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children at an estimated $78 billion a year.

Health care costs amount to $42.7 billion annually, including uncompensated hospital expenditures, Medicaid births, Medicaid fraud, and Medicaid for immigrants’ U.S.-born children.

Several different food assistance and nutritional programs add costs of $13.5 billion a year. These programs include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF).

Costs associated with criminal justice at the federal, state, and local levels are estimated at about $47 billion a year.

“The burden of illegal immigration on U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling, with the gross cost per taxpayer at $1,156 every year,” the report says.

A separate FAIR report published last April estimated that as of the end of 2021, there were about 15.5 million illegal immigrants living in the United States—up significantly from around 14.5 million in 2020.

In October 2022, the immigration group revealed that 5.5 million illegal aliens had crossed the U.S. border since President Joe Biden took office.

“The American people viscerally understand that no nation can flourish without controlling its borders and enforcing its immigration laws,” Stein said about FAIR’s latest report.

“The purpose of this report is to provide them with the true costs of these ruinous policies—$150.7 billion a year and growing with no inclination on the part of the current administration to address the problem.”

Border Crisis

According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there were 874,449 migrant encounters at the southern border in the first fourth months of the fiscal year 2023, i.e. from Oct. 1, 2022 to Jan. 31.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) recently visited the southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas. A statement released from her office on March 6 following her trip said that the CBP’s four-month figure could potentially mean over 2.6 million crossings for the current fiscal year “if nothing is done to stop the incoming migration wave.”

There were almost 2.4 million migrant encounters in the fiscal year 2022, up from 1.7 million in the year prior, according to CBP.

“In one county alone in Texas, it is estimated that the cartels made $33 million in one month, and human trafficking has become a multibillion-dollar industry,” Salazar’s office said. “Since the start of FY23, 169,000 pounds of illegal drugs were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

Mexican cartels have been buying precursor chemicals from China to make fentanyl and then smuggling the finished product to the United States.

On Feb. 27, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz announced on Twitter that San Diego agents and local law enforcement officials arrested three individuals and seized 232 pounds of fentanyl.

“This amount of Fentanyl had the potential to kill over 50 million people,” Ortiz wrote. “We continue to take the fight to the cartels and narcotics smugglers!”

On March 8, CBP announced that officers working at El Paso area ports of entry had seized about 120 pounds of marijuana, 28.96 pounds of cocaine, and 0.89 pounds of fentanyl in recent days.