Guest Post by Paul Sperry
Mexico won’t have to pay for the wall, after all. US taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab, either. The controversial barrier, rather, will cover its own cost just by closing the border to illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole.
That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall President Trump plans to build along the southern border will pay for itself by curbing the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty.
“The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.
Federal data shows that a wall would work. A two-story corrugated metal fence in El Paso, Texas, first erected under the Bush administration has already curtailed illegal border crossings there by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which it was built.
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Absent a wall, the Homeland Security Department forecasts an additional 1.7 million illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border over the next decade.
If a wall stopped just 200,000 of those future crossings, Camarota says, it would pay for itself in fiscal savings from welfare, public education, refundable tax credits and other benefits currently given to low-income, illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
If a wall stopped 50 percent of those expected crossings, he says, it would save American taxpayers a whopping $64 billion — almost four times the wall’s cost — to say nothing of the additional billions in federal savings from reduced federal drug interdiction and border-security enforcement.
Camarota explains that illegal border-crossers from Mexico and Central America — who account for more than 75 percent of the illegal immigrant population in the US — are overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and lack English language and other skills. In fact, the average Latino illegal immigrant has less than a 10th-grade education. That means if they work, they tend to make low wages; and as a result pay relatively little in taxes while using public services. And if they have children while in the US, they more often than not receive welfare benefits on behalf of those US-born children, who have the same welfare eligibility as any other citizen.
“A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households is received on behalf of their US-born children,” Camarota said. “This is especially true of households headed by illegal immigrants.”
Therefore, illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden of more than $72,000 during their lifetimes, Camarota says. Including costs for their US-born children, the fiscal drain jumps to more than $94,000.
While the national media routinely report that illegal immigrants don’t go on welfare, Camarota says this is a pervasive myth. While in most cases they can’t legally qualify for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid or other public benefits, the reality is that the vast majority of households headed by illegal immigrants are on welfare through their children.
The vast majority of households headed by illegal immigrants are on welfare through their children.
“There is simply no question that households headed by illegal immigrants access a good deal of welfare. In fact, illegal immigrants’ use of some programs is quite high,” he said.
The US Census Bureau’s latest “survey of income and program participation” shows that 62 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households are on the federal dole — more than double the rate for households headed by native-born Americans. And that includes households where one or more workers are present in the household.
Their use of US welfare is highest for food stamps and Medicaid, data show.
Though welfare use among illegal immigrants is much more associated with children, “childless illegal households still use some welfare programs at surprisingly high rates,” Camarota pointed out.
Some collect federal benefits through fraud or administrative errors or through green-card holders. But in the case of Medicaid, pregnant women illegally in the country can sometimes be enrolled in the program.
There is also an Emergency Medicaid program that covers predominantly illegal immigrants. Funds from the multibillion-dollar program go to hospitals to offset the cost of treating adult illegal aliens who can’t pay their bills. And it’s not just for ER visits. In New York, the program can be used to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy for illegal immigrants.
In addition, Camarota said the IRS each year pays out billions to illegal immigrants in refundable child tax credits and the earned income tax credit.
While Democrats complain the $18 billion price tag for the Trump wall is too high, the “Dreamers” amnesty bill they want Trump and Republicans to pass in exchange for funding the wall (or ideally in spite of the wall) would cost US taxpayers even more than the construction of the border partition over 10 years.
“The cost of the DREAM Act has been estimated as very large — a $26 billion net cost in the first 10 years,” Camarota noted.
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that 3 million DREAM Act recipients would receive an estimated $12 billion-plus in ObamaCare subsidies, more than $5.5 billion in Medicaid benefits, $5.5 billion in earned-income and child-tax credits and more than $2 billion in food stamps.
A bipartisan bill incorporating the deal was defeated in the Senate last month by a vote of 54-45. Trump rejected the proposal in favor of a tougher border bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which limits the number of DACA beneficiaries to 1.8 million, curbs family visas, or so-called chain migration, and phases out the diversity visa lottery, while earmarking $25 billion in funding for the wall and other border security.
Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @paulsperry_
I’ve been saying this for decades. This would also be a two-fer, as it would not only pay for the wall in a myriad of ways, but it would remove incentives for illegals to come here in the first place.
Right. And eliminating one hopelessly outdated aircraft carrier would pay for the wall also. Neither will happen. Entropy will win.
If they’re so outdated why are Russia and China building new ones?
I don’t know why. But the fact that they’re building them doesn’t mean that U.S. carriers are not obsolete.
I served in Nam aboard a fancy shmancy hi tech nuke cruiser. We were constantly under threat from little N.V. wooden P.T. boats (COMARS) with simple non-guided rockets. These things were completely invisible to radar. The only thing that protected us was N.V. fear of escalation if they took us out. One of those rockets through the thin hull into a reactor and it’s over.
Mike, now with supersonic missiles operational, sending one of these floating gas tanks into battle against a foe that can actually defend themselves with 5,000 of our youngsters on it would be utter madness. Let’s hope to God TPTB have more sense than the 7 thumb downers I earned.
Another thing to add would be banning money transfers to Mexico that are not in direct payment of commercial transactions so that money would stay here, circulate in our economy and pay taxes here in stead of doing the same there.
“not in direct payment of commercial transactions”. That would be ridiculously easy to circumvent & impossible to enforce. (example: the immigrant would wire money home, and the recipient would mail back some knick-knack).
Not if both the sender and the recipient was required to be registered as a business actually doing specific business between the United States and Mexico.
And if it were that easy to circumvent money transfer laws the Cartels wouldn’t go to such elaborate schemes to avoid detection, they’d just send a trinket back in exchange for the money they wired there.
With very few exceptions, undocumented immigrants on welfare is an urban legend.
“SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented non-citizens. Specific requirements for non-citizens who may be eligible have changed substantially over the years and become more complicated in certain areas. The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 limits eligibility for SNAP benefits to U.S. citizens and certain lawfully present non-citizens.”.
https://www.uscis.gov/tools/settling-us/government-benefits
So an illegal and her family comes here and has a child.
That child is ineligible for welfare to support the illegal and the other members of here family that joined her? NO, the child is an American citizen as a result of having been born here.
Or fake documents are used with the encouragement of various pro immigrant groups that aid them in obtaining and using them.
Truth is, no record is kept and there are no verifiable numbers available to show the extent or lack of extent of the problem, same as in drivers licenses and voter registration that requires no proof of citizenship to obtain but serves as as paperwork ID for welfare benefits (no way to check or verify).
It they have any anchor babies (another thing we should abolish) they are ‘American Citizens’ and thus are available for SNAP, Medicaid, etc.
Marsh….it is a good thing that you don’t consider SSDI, Education, Medical, Housing Assistance (via Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) for citizen children, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Food Stamp benefits were provided to households with an illegal alien parent for the use of his or her citizen child
So you chose not to read the specifics or not to understand the findings of the us census bureau or are just word parsing as in it depends on what is means. Not surprising.
Why can’t we just seize a good chunk of the remittances that are going back all cash to Mexico via the illegals here? It’s like $30B or so a year. Seize a little over half for a year and bingo bango, brand new wall.
When I have houses for rent in and around urban areas, the vast majority of the people who call do NOT speak any English or hardly any, are NOT from Puerto Rico, and are on section 8 housing benefits, fuel assistance, and SNAP.
These folks often have fake SS cards. How do I know this? Because when I run their credit checks, the SS# comes back to a deceased person from California or New York.
These SS # are real, and if an employer doesn’t bother to do any serious check, they just float through the system and get benefits.
Massachusetts I don’t think even asks a person’s immigration status, and it is actually illegal for me to ask as a real estate agent about their immigration status.
So my landlords are at risk from illegals who can decide to not pay rent, destroy the place, skip town, and be impossible to collect from.
The only way I can safely and legally screen them is through their credit history and SS#. Right on the application is clearly states that if they lie about anything on the application, they are automatically disqualified.
When the fake SS# comes up, I call them and say “Hi, I need some clarification on your SS#. It’s coming up as belonging to a person born in 1940 in California, and you are only 35. Can you provide a birth certificate to corroborate your identity?” Guess what? Poof..they are gone and I never hear from them again.
In any case, 90% and more have terrible credit scores under 650 which automatically disqualifies them as I advise all my landlords to require a credit score of 700 or better to rent.
They usually cannot document enough income either, as I also require my landlords to have a debt-to-income ratio of 40% or less, otherwise they can’t pay rent. When that happens, I often get a very angry phone call from their “caseworker” who arrogantly informs me I cannot disqualify their “client” based on this criteria. To which I inform them my landlord is a private property owner who can use whatever criteria they wish as long as they apply it to EVERYONE who applies.
I have also been told by these same “caseworkers” that the landlord must LOWER THE RENT TO ACCOMMODATE THE RENTER.
For example: I had a house for rent about 2 years ago outside the city in a smaller town. Ranch. 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, two car garage, fireplace, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. Rent was $1600 per month and included nothing but water and sewer. Oil heat. Tenant was responsible for rent, electric, oil, trash removal, and lawn mowing. This would translate to about $2300 per month total not including food for the family.
Most of the applicants had Section 8 Vouchers which mean they would get the subsidy paid to the landlord and they would be responsible for about 50-100 per month of the rent. The maximum the voucher would pay for a 4 bedroom in this area was 1200. So in this case the tenant would have to come up with the $400 out of pocket PLUS the oil, the electric, and the trash. Still would come out to about 1200 per month. The average applicant made about $1600 per month after taxes for a family of 4.
Tenants are not allowed to go beyond the maximum voucher amount without written permission from the state Section 8 program, and anyone on the program under 4 years was automatically barred from this anyway.
So what did these people try to do? Why, bring in more people to split the rent! So now I have 4 adults and 4 children wanting to rent a 4 bedroom house. Which technically is legal, as the board of health allows 2 people per bedroom.
THE ONLY WAY AROUND THIS IS TO QUALIFY EACH ADULT APPLICANT. In other words, they are all EQUALLY responsible for the rent independently of each other. In Mass I can do this. Just because Joe Blow doesn’t give you his half doesn’t mean Betty Boop, Kaiser Soze et al aren’t on the hook for the whole thing.
Folks, these people could not wrap their heads around this math at all, and there was no reasoning with them. I tried to explain that on paper their income just wasn’t enough for them to afford even the oil required to heat the place in winter. Their response EVERY TIME: “Oh, I get fuel assistance”. Sure. Fuel assistance for oil is capped at a certain amount and it’s first come first served and you have to apply every year and there’s no guarantee you’ll get it.
They live hand to mouth with massive reliance on government and state handouts and expect landlords to roll the dice and hope they pay the rent. Please.