The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer

From Heritage.org (May 6):

Executive Summary

Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue:

• Direct benefits. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation.
• Means-tested welfare benefits. There are over 80 of these programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services to roughly 100 million low-income Americans. Major programs include Medicaid, food stamps, the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
• Public education. At a cost of $12,300 per pupil per year, these services are largely free or heavily subsidized for low-income parents.
• Population-based services. Police, fire, highways, parks, and similar services, as the National Academy of Sciences determined in its study of the fiscal costs of immigration, generally have to expand as new immigrants enter a community; someone has to bear the cost of that expansion.

The cost of these governmental services is far larger than many people imagine. For example, in 2010, the average U.S. household received $31,584 in government benefits and services in these four categories.

The governmental system is highly redistributive. Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors: The taxes they pay exceed the direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services they receive. For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. The average college-educated household thus generated a fiscal surplus of $29,250 that government used to finance benefits for other households. [read more]

All that money for future Democrat voters. What a waste. Maybe there should be provision that says for illegal immigrants: You can’t vote for 20 years until you make yourself legal. And from the Blaze.com (May 10), it looks like there is a biometric ‘national id system’ tucked inside the immigration bill:

The section in the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act called “Identity Authentication Mechanism,” which describes a “photo tool,” is what has some on alert.

The section states that an employer hoping to hire an individual would need to verify the identity of the said person “using the photo tool.” Such a tool would be developed and maintained by the Secretary of State allowing employers to “match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer to a photo maintained by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database.” [read more]

Nice. Real nice.