Nevada’s $630 Million Illegal Immigrant Burden

One of the states hardest hit by the nation’s dire financial crisis annually spends hundreds of millions of dollars to educate, incarcerate and medically treat its rapidly growing illegal immigrant population. 

Each year taxpayers in Nevada, the country’s fastest growing state, spend a whopping $630 million to provide illegal aliens with public services that should be reserved for legal U.S. residents. The burden has taken such a toll that the desperate state legislature passed several measures to help curb illegal immigration. 

Among them are laws addressing human smuggling and drivers licenses. Additionally, local police departments in municipalities with especially high illegal alien populations—such as Las Vegas—have entered into federal partnerships to enforce immigration law.

But the damage has been done in a once prosperous state that for nearly two years has had the nation’s highest home foreclosure rate. Around 5 million fraudulent mortgages nationwide are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and its no secret that a substantial chunk of them are in Nevada. Illegal immigrants are draining the state in other ways too.

A report (The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Nevadans) published by a nonprofit organization that strives to secure the southern border, lays out the alarming statistics which were obtained by using federal and state figures. A poll had already revealed that a majority of Nevadans think illegal immigration is having a negative effect on the state’s budget. 

This will only drive the point home. The state spends $470 million annually to educate the children of illegal immigrants in public schools and an additional $45 million for limited English program. Eighty five million goes to healthcare for illegal immigrants and $31 to incarcerate them. 

Other similar reports have been published in the last few years documenting the huge financial burden that illegal immigration has on states, counties and cities throughout the country. U.S. taxpayers annually dish out tens of billions of dollars to educate, incarcerate and medically treat the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.