The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8711 ... ration.pdf

Released December 6, 2007

CBO drew the following conclusions:

State and local governments incur costs for providing
services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited
options for avoiding or minimizing those costs.
All of the estimates that CBO reviewed, regardless of
the jurisdiction examined or programs considered,
reached this conclusion. Rules governing many federal
programs, as well as decisions handed down by various
courts, limit the authority of state and local governments
to avoid or constrain the costs of providing services
to unauthorized immigrants. For example, both
state and federal courts have ruled that states may not
refuse to provide free public education to a student on
the basis of his or her immigration status. Furthermore,
many states have their own statutory or constitutional
requirements concerning the provision of
certain services to needy residents.

The amount that state and local governments spend
on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a
small percentage of the total amount spent by those
governments to provide such services to residents in
their jurisdictions. The estimates that CBO reviewed
measured costs associated with providing services to
unauthorized immigrants that ranged from a few million
dollars in states with small unauthorized populations
to tens of billions of dollars in California
(currently the state with the largest population of
unauthorized immigrants). Costs were concentrated in
programs that make up a large percentage of total state
spending—specifically, those associated with education,
health care, and law enforcement.11 In most of
the estimates that CBO examined, however, spending
for unauthorized immigrants accounted for less than 5
percent of total state and local spending for those services.
Spending for unauthorized immigrants in certain
jurisdictions in California was higher but still
represented less than 10 percent of total spending for
those services.

The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate
for state and local governments do not offset
the total cost of services provided to those immigrants.
Most of the estimates found that even though
unauthorized immigrants pay taxes and other fees to
state and local jurisdictions, the resulting revenues offset
only a portion of the costs incurred by those jurisdictions
for providing services related to education,
health care, and law enforcement. Although it is difficult
to obtain precise estimates of the net impact of
the unauthorized population on state and local budgets
(see Box 1), that impact is most likely modest.

Federal aid programs offer resources to state and
local governments that provide services to unauthorized
immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover
the costs incurred by those governments. Some of the
reports that CBO examined did not include such
federal transfers when estimating the net effect of
the unauthorized population on state and local
governments.