Matt Reed: Illegal immigrants cost Florida $700M a year
January 25, 2011

How much do illegal immigrants cost Florida schools, hospitals and other important institutions every year?



Remember this number: $700 million.

Stick that to the fridge, e-mail it to friends or mention it at the next town hall meeting. No other credible estimate exists. So I tracked down studies and government data, crunched the numbers and arrived at $700 million as the gross costs of education, prisons and unreimbursed health care in Florida.

Yes, that's a fraction of the billions cited in 2009 by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in a report that targeted all immigrants and has since been debunked. But it's a significant cost nonetheless, amounting to $37 per Floridian.

Consider that the amount spent to educate "unauthorized" children could pay for Florida's entire voluntary prekindergarten system or operate Brevard Public Schools for a year. Our prisons spent more to house illegal immigrants in 2010 than the Legislature spent on the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, state records show.

And note that the $700 million does not include costs incurred by county jails, state child-welfare agencies or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"There are occasions when we hold someone," Brevard jail Commander Susan Jeter told me Monday. Brevard temporarily held five illegal immigrants in 2010 for a cost of $317. "That's reasonable," Jeter said.
Still, I confidently rounded up my estimate from $696,142,430.

Adding up
Subtotals behind that figure:
Public education for illegal-immigrant children: $548.88 million per year. That does not include U.S.-born children of undocumented parents. Data from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center indicate that Florida has 60,750 school age children who are foreign-born, unauthorized immigrants. Multiply that population by per-pupil spending of $9,035 in Florida, as last reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.
State prisons: $107.07 million per year. The Department of Corrections this month reported 5,641 "confirmed aliens" in its facilities. Multiply that by the average cost per inmate of $18,980 per year, as cited by the National Institute of Corrections.

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/201 ... 00M-a-year