Thread: The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Floridians

The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Floridians


Executive Summary

Analysis of the latest Census data indicates Florida's illegal immigrant population is costing the state's taxpayers $4.3 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated taxes collected from illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $3.3 billion per year. The annual fiscal burden amounts to about $575 per Florida household headed by a native-born resident.

This analysis looks specifically at the costs to the state for education, health care and incarceration resulting from illegal immigration. These three are the largest cost areas, and they are the same three areas analyzed in a 1994 study conducted by the Urban Institute, which provides a useful baseline for comparison a decade later. Other studies have been conducted in the interim, showing trends that support the conclusions of this report.

There are other significant costs associated with illegal immigration, and federal and state officials should take these into account as well. Even without accounting for all of the numerous areas in which costs associated with illegal immigration are being incurred by Florida taxpayers, the program areas analyzed in this study indicate that the burden is substantial and that the costs are rapidly increasing.

The more than $4.3 billion in costs incurred by Florida taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:

*Education. Based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population in Florida and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Floridians spend more than $4 billion annually on education for illegal immigrant children and for their U.S.-born siblings. About 8.7 percent of the K-12 public school students in Florida are children of illegal aliens.


*Health Care. Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population amount to about $165 million a year.


*Incarceration. The uncompensated cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in Florida's state and county prisons amounts to about $155 million a year (not including local jail detention costs or related law enforcement and judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to their incarceration).

State and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but they do not come near to matching the expenses. The total of such payments can generously be estimated at nearly $1 billion per year.

The fiscal costs of illegal immigration do not end with these three major cost areas. The total costs of illegal immigration to the state's taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as special English instruction, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers were also calculated.


State and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but they do not come near to matching the expenses. The total of such payments can generously be estimated at nearly $1 billion per year.

The fiscal costs of illegal immigration do not end with these three major cost areas. The total costs of illegal immigration to the state's taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as special English instruction, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers were also calculated.

Introduction

While the primary responsibility for combating illegal immigration rests with the federal government, there are many measures that state and local governments can take to combat the problem. Floridians should not be expected to assume this already large and growing burden from illegal immigration simply because local businesses or other special interests benefit from being able to employ lower cost workers. The state could adopt measures to systematically collect information on illegal alien use of taxpayer-funded services and on where they are employed. Policies could then be pursued to hold employers financially accountable.

The state could also broaden its cooperative agreement with the federal government for training local law enforcement personnel in immigration law to be able to increase the numbers of illegal immigrants apprehended for breaking the law that are turned over to the immigration authorities for removal from the country.

Florida has also voluntarily adopted policies that add to the cost burdens of illegal immigration. The state and some local jurisdictions have adopted policies that recognize an identity card issued by the Mexican government to Mexicans residing illegally in the United States as valid identity documents for state and local governmental purposes. 1 This clearly is an accommodation to illegal alien residents. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has repeatedly endorsed a proposal to issue state driver's licenses to illegal aliens.2

Florida unsuccessfully sued the federal government in the early 1990s seeking compensation for the costs of illegal immigration.3 It is unreasonable for a state to expect federal assistance to compensate for the fiscal burden of illegal immigration if it is pursuing policies that encourage illegal aliens to come and remain in the state.

Background Information

Florida had the nation's fifth highest number of illegal immigrants in its population in 2000 according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The official estimate is that there were 337,000 aliens residing illegally in the state, which was slightly less than five percent of the country's total illegal alien population. 4 The federal government's estimate of illegal aliens represented about 2.1 percent of the state's population. Previously, as recently as 1992, the INS estimated that the resident illegal alien population in the state was 270,000 persons â€â€