According to a report this week, the average unskilled illegal alien household cost the legal taxpayers an average of $19,588 annually. There are an estimated 4.5 million such households. The tab comes to just under $90 billion annually.
You can also check out the summary
This report is a little tough to read into in terms of purely illegal immigrants. I'll treat all the low skill immigrants and then the illegal ones with some conservative (in a non political sense) assumptions
These 4.5 million households each receive (net) roughly 20k from the other 100 million or so households, for a total of 90 billion. 90 billion/100 million = 900 per household. I think, THINK, that the average household saves that much or more due to cheap labor. That is not a lot of money to save over the course of the year considering all the goods and services we buy. See my above back of the envelope calculations. You can probably save 900 dollars on one major home improvement that uses cheap illegal labor, granted not all households undertake renovations of that magnitude.
The illegal only analysis requires some assumptions. We know the legal and illegal analysis shows that both receive on average 30k worth of benefits, yet pay only 10k in taxes. Now the illegals pay no taxes and probably dont receive all of the benefits the legals do. Regardless, to bound the problem on the high end, i'll assume they receive all 30k.
4.5 million households, 40% of which are illegal, equals 1.8 million households receiving 30k in benefits. 1.8 million * 30k = 54 billion. 54 bil divided by 100 mil tax paying households = 540 dollars per household that goes to illegal families.
540 dollars is HIGH estimate. It could be 200 dollars.
They dont cost us that much, if anything, after our savings are accounted for.
Feel free to critique this line of thinking for intellectual purposes. Maybe I left a zero out somewhere. I could be convinced that illegal people cost us money if the case is presented, but my initial feelings seem to be correct after looking at that report, which might not be the most unbiased report out there.
I only take this side of the debate because this is what I think as an analytical reasonable human being. I have no vested interest in illegal people being here or not. I am one of the most apolitical people ever. I actually voted Bush. I dont critique the war. I see why we pulled out of Kyoto, because it would probably cripple the economy. Its six of one or half dozen of an another. If the war in Iraq is for oil, I completely understand, because we have become dependent on the ****. Until we start to realize that other countries are nipping at our heels and oil (among other things) is a short term solution we are are just going to keep digging a deeper hole for ourselves. Rant truncated.
