New Study Finds That Illegal Immigration Costs Arizona $1.3 Billion a Year; Education, Health Care, Incarceration Costs Are Increasing Rapidly. PR Newswire WASHINGTON, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Illegal immigration now costs Arizona taxpayers about $1.3 billion annually, finds a new report, "The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Arizonans," published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The report shows a nearly nine-fold increase in the costs of illegal immigration during the past decade, and that the burden on the state's taxpayers continues to grow rapidly. The average native-born- headed household in Arizona now bears more than $700 a year in additional costs due to mass illegal immigration to the state, finds the report. The cost of providing education to illegal aliens and their children leads the way at $810 million a year. Health care for illegal immigrants, which threatens to bankrupt many Arizona hospitals and clinics, adds $400 million a year to the tab, while incarcerating illegal aliens costs Arizona taxpayers $80 million annually. Only a small fraction of these and other costs incurred by the state are offset by an estimated $257 million a year that illegal aliens pay in taxes to the state. The costs are even higher than the total of these three cost areas, because there are a number of other expensive benefits received by illegal aliens that are not included in this calculation. "Perhaps even more astounding than the $1.3 billion a year that uncontrolled illegal immigration is costing Arizona is the rate at which those costs are increasing," commented Jack Martin, the author of the report. "Between 1996 and 2000, the illegal alien population of Arizona grew by a staggering 150 percent, and that rate of increase has not abated. Unless the federal government takes steps to clamp down on the massive influx of new illegal aliens, and state officials begin cooperating with immigration enforcement authorities, illegal immigration will do to Arizona what it has already done to California's state budget." "While Arizona has become the new illegal gateway to America, and Arizonans have been forced to bear the staggering costs of our failed immigration policy, the state's elected representatives in Washington have, ironically, been at the forefront of efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and their families," Martin continued. "The $1.3 billion a year they are now paying will be just a taste of what is to come if we do not begin enforcing our immigration laws, or, worse yet, if we further New Study Finds That Illegal Immigration Costs Arizona $1.3 Billion a Year, June 3, 2004. Copyright 2004 by Federation for American Immigration Reform. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.
encourage illegal immigration by enacting amnesty proposals. An executive summary of "The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Arizonans," and the full report are available at http://www.fairus.org/. CONTACT: Jack Martin of Federation for American Immigration Reform, +1-202-328-7004 Web site: http://www.fairus.org/ 2
Why business should speak out on immigrant workers. Joshua Hoyt President George W. Bush in January announced his principles for a temporary worker program and regularization of the status of some of the nation's 7 million to 11 million undocumented immigrants. Democrats responded with legislation by Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago. And the partisan race is on for the increasingly important Latino vote in November. The issue is of deep interest to Illinois' business community, which should make itself heard. * Undocumented immigrants play an important economic role: There are some 500,000 undocumented immigrants in Illinois. They fill critical low-wage labor needs. Our agricultural, manufacturing, restaurant, tourism, health care and service industries would grind to a halt without them. We can continue to turn a hypocritical blind eye to the obvious, or address real world problems pragmatically. * Immigration policies that respect the market demand for labor will restore the rule of law in the U.S.: Inflexible immigration policies result in massive flows of illegal labor, with both workers and employers complicit in the hypocrisy. The Illinois economy is global. Over 94% of the net labor-force growth in the Chicago area during the 1990s was attributable to immigrant workers. Reform will facilitate the movement of skilled workers and business professionals to meet market needs, create a legal flow of temporary workers with strong labor protections and allow the vast underground of hard-working undocumented workers to come out of the shadows. * Legalization will unleash the economic potential of Illinois' immigrant communities: Chicago's banking community was shocked by the influx of $100 million in immigrant savings in the few short years since banks began accepting the "matricula consular'' (consular ID) issued by the Mexican government to its foreign nationals in the U.S. Several weeks ago, Crain's wrote about the thriving market in home mortgages for the undocumented, despite the lack of a secondary market. The entrepreneurial engine of the Mexican-American community in Chicago, the 26th Street business district, pays the second-highest amount of sales tax after the Magnificent Mile along North Michigan Avenue. * Security: There is a tiny group of people who would enter this country to hurt us. The existence of large, increasingly sophisticated networks of smugglers of human beings and purveyors of false IDs, serving millions of undocumented who want only to work, is bad for national security. Legalization will reduce the demand for human smuggling and false IDs. * The moral imperative: I come from a tradition of Catholic business people who take their faith seriously. Many in the business community would agree that it is a moral outrage that we have ended up with a large underground of vulnerable workers and children, where a family of four earns on average $10,000 less a year than legal workers. It may be very convenient to have these people cleaning our homes, caring for our children and cutting our grass on the cheap, with no prospect of bettering their lives. But a sense of right and wrong, as much as Hoyt, Joshua. Why business should speak out on immigrant workers. in Cain s Chicago Business, 5/10/2004. Copyright 2004 Cain s Chicago Business. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission. 3
economic and security imperatives, is a fine reason for the business community to speak out on this issue. Joshua Hoyt is executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. 4
Would you support reducing immigration? 1. According to the FAIR report, what are some of the costs of illegal immigration? 2. According to Hoyt, what are some of the benefits that immigrant workers provide? 3. According to Hoyt, how does immigration policy effect national security? 4. Why do states like Arizona and California have such a large influx of illegal immigrants? What should be done to address this? 5. Do you believe that illegal immigration into the US should be reduced? What arguments most influenced your decision? 5