A new map posted by HowMuch.net breaks down the economic toll of illegal immigrants state by state, and their findings are extremely troubling.
Using information gathered from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, How Much’s map shows how much money illegal immigrants cost American taxpayers on a state-by-state basis.
California is most devastated by the heavy toll, with a whopping $23 billion in that state alone.
States closer to the Mexican border are most affected, but several states throughout the country still pay billions to support illegal immigrants through education, welfare, law enforcement, and medical care.
Here’s the breakdown, provided by HowMuch.net:
The map doesn’t include federal costs.
According to the Washington Examiner, when federal costs are included, illegal immigrants cost $135 billion a year.
Liberals like to justify their opposition to the deportation of illegal immigrants due to their estimations of initial costs for actually enforcing our federal immigration laws.
But considering that current data suggests over a trillion dollars spent supporting illegal immigrants a decade, leftist arguments that deportation is too expensive crumble rather quickly.
Furthermore, Democrats like to point out that illegal immigrants pay some taxes, such as sales tax. According to the social security administration, about 3.4 million illegal immigrants (out of 11.1 million people illegally residing in the U.S.) pay social security taxes.
However, the How Much map takes into account taxes paid by illegal immigrants. So the costs represented on the map fall entirely to legal U.S. residents’ taxes.
The Washington Examiner continues:
The costs cover added expenditures for education, welfare, law enforcement, and medical care.
When federal costs are included, the price tag nationally soars to $135 billion a year.
FAIR’s data also includes the offset of taxes paid by illegal immigrants, though the numbers are much lower. In the state and local column, they are $3.5 billion. Nationally they are $15 billion.
Overall, costs associated with illegal immigrants is much higher for state and local governments than the federal government. States pay $89 billion, Uncle Sam $46 billion.
Below are the ten states most heavily weighed by the cost of illegal immigration:
1. California – $23,038,125,353
2. Texas – $10,994,614,550
3. New York – $7,489,141,357
4. Florida – $6,290,429,108
5. New Jersey – $4,466,838,574
6. Illinois – $3,220,767,517
7. Georgia – $2,487,719,503
8. North Carolina – $2,437,965,113
9. Maryland – $2,378,996,947
10. Arizona – $2,314,131,964
HowMuch.net also explains why some states are more heavily affected than others, citing proximity to the border and overall population:
First, states that spend the most on illegal immigration tend to be located close to Mexico. Looking at out map, the two states with the highest expenditures are California ($23B) and Texas ($11B), both sharing long borders with Mexico. In fact, there’s a cluster of dark red states stretching along the Southwest. States closest to the phenomenon pay the most as a result.
Second, states with higher population levels tend to spend more than their less populated counterparts. You can see a group of high-expenditure states clustered around the Northeast, not to mention Illinois and Florida. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California and Texas are also the two most populous states in the country. High population levels and proximity to Mexico act like a double-whammy for illegal immigration expenses.
Now take a look at the places with relatively low levels of expenditures for illegal immigration, the light blue states. They are all located far away from the U.S.-Mexico border with relatively small population levels. West Virginia is perhaps an exceptional state, seeing that it is surrounded by red and dark red. We can speculate that this is likely due to the fact that West Virginia has a struggling economy which actually contracted last year.
Are Democrats willing to continue this sort of spending for years to come?
Tell us what you think of this mess, and sound off in the comments below.
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