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Recent Texas State Study of Illegal Alien Fiscal Costs: A First Effort With a Flawed Methodology Other States Should Not Use, Says FAIR
Tuesday December 12, 6:04 pm ET

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- FAIR calls into question the legitimacy of the findings in a recently released Texas State Comptroller's study of the fiscal impact illegal aliens have on the state. According to Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, it is "the first time any state has done a comprehensive financial analysis." The study attempts to show illegal aliens provide a net fiscal gain of $424 million annually. Dan Stein, President of FAIR, warns that "this first report out of Texas suffers questionable design flaws, assumptions, and conclusions in direct contrast to our years of exhaustive studies on this issue, and to our most recent Texas report, which shows illegal aliens cost Texas taxpayers $3.7 billion annually."

The Texas study documents that illegal aliens are, indeed, a billion dollar annual net liability to the state's taxpayers -- even after accounting for taxes paid, but suggests that Texas benefits from their output in goods and services. This makes sense only if the assumption is that the jobs now being done by illegal aliens would not otherwise be done by legal workers. If not for the availability and exploitation of cheap illegal labor, employers would recruit Americans to do the work at higher wages with little reduction of output and currently unemployed and underemployed Texans would benefit, many rising out of poverty. Welfare and other social services expenditures would be expected to decrease and tax collections increase.

Other mistaken assumptions of the Texas State Comptroller's report include:

* The study's estimate of the illegal alien student population is
artificially low, because it assumes that the illegal alien population
has grown only at the rate of the state's overall population growth
rather than at the much higher rate of estimated growth in the illegal
alien population.

* The state chose to estimate the cost of public education only for
students who are illegal aliens themselves while ignoring the costs of
their siblings who are considered to be U.S. citizens by virtue of
having been born in this country.

* The study ignores the flow of an estimated $5.2 billion in earnings in
Texas that are sent out of the country in remittances.

"Even if this study proved correctly that illegal aliens represent a net gain for the state ... and we know for certain they do not ... Texas would be forced to conclude that it is becoming dangerously reliant on cheap, illegal foreign labor to sustain its economy. That absurd reality should be an outrage to legal workers in Texas whose wages and living standards are in decline," said Stein. "While we commend and encourage Texas, or any state, to examine illegal alien costs, after extensive examination of their study, we strongly discourage other states from using their flawed methodology as a basis for further studies."