Florida Governor DeSantis is Right on the Costs of Illegal Immigration thumbnail

Florida Governor DeSantis is Right on the Costs of Illegal Immigration

By Dr. Rich Swier

Illegal immigration “consumes taxpayer money and burdens governmental services.”


We are very concerned about the influx of illegal aliens into the United State and especially to the state of Florida. The costs to Floridian is staggering and harms legal Florida residents dramatically.

In the article Cost of Illegal immigration: Record $135 billion average $8,075 for each illegal, $25,000 in New York the Federation for American Immigration Reform reported:

A continually growing population of illegal aliens, along with the federal government’s ineffective efforts to secure our borders, present significant national security and public safety threats to the United States. They also have a severely negative impact on the nation’s taxpayers at the local, state, and national levels. Illegal immigration costs Americans billions of dollars each year. Illegal aliens are net consumers of taxpayer-funded services and the limited taxes paid by some segments of the illegal alien population are, in no way, significant enough to offset the growing financial burdens imposed on U.S. taxpayers by massive numbers of uninvited guests.

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At the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens. That amounts to a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664. The total cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling. In 2013, FAIR estimated the total cost to be approximately $113 billion. So, in under four years, the cost has risen nearly $3 billion. This is a disturbing and unsustainable trend. The sections below will break down and further explain these numbers at the federal, state, and local levels.

Jason Richwine wrote “DeSantis is right about the cost of illegal immigration,” outlining the staggering costs to Florida:

“DeSantis is right to be concerned. Although illegal immigration poses many challenges, the increase in state expenditures is perhaps the most immediate one.

In a recent report for the Center for Immigration Studies, I calculated that Florida spent approximately $2 billion in 2019 on major health and education programs for the nearly 800,000 immigrants who lived in the state illegally before the recent surge.

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Of course, assessing the impact of illegal immigration is not simply an accounting exercise. An uncontrolled border has legal, political, and cultural effects that go beyond dollars and cents.

Whatever one thinks of the way the U.S. selects legal immigrants, the process does at least follow the laws passed by Congress. Illegal immigration, by contrast, flouts those laws.”

By far the largest state expenditure on the U.S.- and foreign-born children of immigrants who came illegally is public schooling, which the state must provide regardless of a student’s immigration status.

Extrapolating from Florida’s per-pupil expenditures, educating the children of illegal immigrants cost state taxpayers $1.6 billion in 2019. This figure likely understates the true cost, as it does not reflect the special language training that children of people who came illegally disproportionately require.

Jason Richwine wars:

When President Biden opted to erode security at the border, he also eroded the right of Americans to decide who can and cannot enter their country. Until democratic control over immigration policy is restored, Floridians – and, indeed, all Americans – will continue to pay the price.

COLUMN BY

Jason Richwine

Jason Richwine is a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.