Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. Hundreds of Billions

Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers $346 billion annually and, besides the well-documented areas of education, jail and medical care, the money is being spent on manpower for overwhelmed government agencies charged with combating the crisis.

A renowned economist, who has thoroughly researched the impact of illegal immigration and published numerous reports and articles, recently published an alarming book on the subject that is sure to incense most Americans. In his book, Edwin Rubenstein exposes the gargantuan costs of illegal aliens, according to one recent review.

Titled “The New Americans: Economic, Demographics and Fiscal Effects of Immigration” the book supports previous reports of U.S. employers of illegal aliens raking in billions of dollars thanks to the cheap labor while American taxpayers subsidize the ordeal.

Rubenstein points out that illegal criminal aliens play an increasingly large role in the Department of Justice’s workload and budgetary needs, including nearly $5 million to fund 34 positions to oversee a human trafficking initiative in its civil rights division. U.S. prisons are also overwhelmed with illegal immigrants with 147,000 illegal aliens in local jails, 74,000 in state prisons and 46,000 in federal prisons.

About 28% of all federal prisoners are illegal immigrants, most of them from Mexico and the cost to U.S. taxpayers is about $5.4 billion a year. Many are repeat offenders that get released into communities rather than deported. Numerous such cases have made headlines because the illegal immigrants had previous convictions yet were released to commit murder, rape and dozens of serious drunk-driving offenses against innocent Americans.

Another huge law enforcement cost related to illegal immigration is the overhaul of the FBI’s technology capability so that it could provide identification services for federal immigration and local law enforcement agencies. The bureau estimates it will take $90.5 million to make the necessary modifications.

These new figures don’t even include the hundreds of millions of dollars that U.S. taxpayers dish out annually to provide free educations and medical care for those in the country illegally.