Reply to Establishment Republican's Reason for Opposing Immigration EO

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are a welfare state with open borders. We are broke.  It's insane and suicidal.[/quote]

So if it's all about economics, then it should be relatively easy to evaluate what the least costly solution is. According to this CNN article (http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/01/news/economy/immigration_economy/index.htm) the US benefits from the presence of illegal immigrants. If it's better for the economy to have them here, then that ought to end the question, but let's dig into the analysis a little.

Maryland currently has about 275,000 illegal immigrants (or at least it did in 2013 - see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/02/map_illegal_immigrant_population_by_state.html), at an estimated cost to Maryland of $1.4 billion per year in education, medical care and incarceration (or roughly $5100 per illegal immigrant), according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Extrapolating roughly, this means 11 million illegal immigrants would cost U.S. taxpayers about $56.1 billion per year.

However, this ignores the fact that illegal immigrants pay sales tax when they purchase goods. According to Tax Foundation, in the period 2007-2011 the average person in Maryland paid $671 in sales taxes (see http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-general-sales-tax-collections-capita-fiscal-years-2007-2011). Assuming there are 275,000 illegal immigrants in Maryland, that would be $184.5 million per year going into Maryland's coffers, reducing the annual cost to Maryland to more like $1.2 billion per year (or $4,363 per illegal immigrant).

According to the Center for American Progress, locating, processing and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants would require a government task force at a taxpayer cost of $285 billion (or $25,000 per deportee). One of the major expenses would be finding them. However, the CAP is a left-leaning group, so they have an incentive to make this number high, so let's assume it's actually 20% lower and only $228 billion (or $20,000 per deportee).

So, it would cost the same as roughly 3.5-4 years worth of services to deport them. At that breakpoint, it probably makes sense to make the effort to deport them. (Even assuming the CAP's number is correct, that would be roughly 5 years of services, and it probably still would make sense.)

But that still underestimates the contribution illegal immigrants make to the economy. An estimated 30 percent own homes and therefore pay property taxes, and some huge percentage rent apartments (after all, they have to live somewhere), therefore paying property taxes via rental payments. Among other things, those property taxes fund the public education of their own children and the children of other legal residents of the state. Similarly, those illegal immigrants who are employed have taxes deducted from their wages - social security, unemployment, etc. - and they also pay income taxes.

Some might claim that illegal immigrants take jobs from US workers (which is one of the possibilities noted in the CNN article linked above), but, according to FactCheck.org, numerous studies by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, the libertarian Cato Institute, the liberal Economic Policy Institute, and the White House under President George W. Bush all concluded that the addition of low-skilled immigrants expands the size of the overall economy creating more job opportunities for everyone, including more higher-wage opportunities for managers.

So, at this point, it's unclear whether it would cost more to deport illegal immigrants than it does to have them stay here.

Making it a little more complicated, according to the Pew Center, approximately 4 million of the illegal immigrants have children. Assuming 2 children per family, that means between 4 million and 8 million children, many of whom were born here and are, therefore, US citizens. We would either need to deport them, too, which would be an interesting and expensive legal exercise since they are citizens, or the government and/or social services would have to pick up the care for another 4-8 million children. That's an expensive proposition, and one that probably has significant social consequences. According to the Foster Care Alumni Association, it costs the Federal and state governments roughly $40,000 per year for a foster child.

So if it would cost $228 billion to deport 11 million, by extrapolation it would cost between $362 billion and $466 billion to deport the children, as well. This is almost certainly high, since there would be efficiencies associated with finding the children along with the parents, but there would also be the legal costs associated with the government attempting to kick a US citizen out of the country, so those might be offset.

If all of the children didn't go with the parents (unlikely, since not all of them are citizens), then there would be an additional roughly $160 billion to $320 billion [b]per year[/b] in foster care costs for the children. So let's assume that half of them are citizens. That would be [b]$80 billion to $160 billion per year[/b], which, by itself, is far more than the unadjusted annual cost of having 11 million illegal immigrants here (without taking into account the economic benefits). Even assuming 10% of the children stayed, that would still be between $800 million and $1.6 billion per year that the government would have to pay to care for children who are legal citizens of the U.S.

So, assuming the cost of keeping the parents here plus the economic benefits to the US is a wash against the cost of finding and deporting them, the cost of dealing with the children of illegal immigrants who are themselves legal citizens of the US and entitled to stay here pushes the equation way over to the side that it's cheaper to keep them here.

But, hey, who would expect the party of business to be interested in a cost benefit analysis?
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