George Rebane

This is a big miss to leftwing columnist Darrell Berkheimer for his muddling and misleading report on our illegal alien problem in the 23sep24 Union (here).  His use of “immigrants” to refer to illegal entrants continues to confuse the national dialogue over porous borders, legal immigration, and immigration policy reform.  For generations by law immigration has been a two-party contract between the government and immigrant.  His unsupported diatribe, especially on the net costs of illegals on federal and state budgets, echoes Democratic Party talking points that have long been based on the Big Lie that “our border is secure”.  This claim ignores that somewhere north of the 15M illegals have been released into America under Biden in addition to an unknown few million more ‘got aways’.  Citations on the true net cost of illegal aliens are readily available from investigations by the various Senate and House committees and subcommittees, reports that somehow have evaded Mr Berkheimer’s attention.

A number congressional committees and private sector policy analysis organizations have taken a keen and deep interest in the overall impact on the country by illegal entrants being spread across the land with unaffordable financial and unexpected cultural impacts on local communities into which these people are dumped. (here and here) and (here, here, and here)

From Senate (here) and House (here) investigations we read, “Illegal immigrants are a net fiscal drain, meaning they receive more in government services than they pay in taxes. This result is not due to laziness or fraud. Illegal immigrants actually have high rates of work, and they do pay some taxes, including income and payroll taxes. The fundamental reason that illegal immigrants are a net drain is that they have a low average education level, which results in low average earnings and tax payments. It also means a large share qualify for welfare programs, often receiving benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children. Like their less-educated and low-income U.S.-born counterparts, the tax payments of illegal immigrants do not come close to covering the cost they create.

Newsweek reports (here) “Since the inauguration of President Biden on January 20, 2021, over 3.3 million illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S., according to the Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, which is costing taxpayers billions at the federal and state levels.” 

From the National Institutes of Health we read a report (here) that “examines the major economic pros and cons of illegal immigration and answers the question: what, if any, are the public and private costs of illegal immigration in the United States? In brief, the article finds that between four and 5.4 million illegal immigrants reside here…. The article also finds that illegal immigrants and their own citizen children cost taxpayers an additional $12 to $16.2 billion annually for education, public services, and incarceration after deducting all local, state, and federal taxes paid in by them. In the private sector, illegal aliens are found to save their employers and owners of capital about $1.5 billion more than U.S. workers lose due to wage depression. The article also considers what legal and enforcement reforms would be necessary to dramatically slow the current flow of 300,000 illegals yearly and concludes that, although improvements in the system are now being proposed, the actual reforms will be insufficient to more than stem the currently rising tide of illegals due to economic instability in Mexico and the Third World." 

Finally, from ABC News we hear arguments (here) “that more than half of the country's illegal immigrants work in the "underground economy," meaning that they are paid cash under the table, without paying any kind of taxes.”