National Data | Chart | No-one's Suggesting Mass Deportation—But It Would Pay For Itself
01/26/2006
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Table 1:

Federal Taxes and Expenditures per Illegal Alien Household, 2002

Tax Payments

 

Social Security

$1,687

Income tax

$1,371

Excise and other taxes

   $541

Medicare

   $446

Unemployment

    $83

Corporate income tax

    $84

Total Tax Payments

$4,212

Expenditures

 

Federal prisons, courts, INS

   $760

Medicaid

   $658

Treatment for uninsured

   $591

Food assistance

   $499

Federal Aid to Education

   $371

Social Security & Medicare

   $289

Welfare

   $222

Other transfer payments[1]

   $442

All Other Expenditures[2]

$3,115

Total Expenditures

$6,949

Deficit (Taxes less expenditures)

$-2,736

Source: Steven A. Camarota, "The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget," CIS, August 2004. Table 2.

a. Earned Income Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, unemployment, federal disability, higher education assistance, Stafford Student Loans, means-tested programs for refugees. Illegals are assumed to be receiving no federal disability or means-tested programs for refugees.

b. Includes those federal expenditures not accounted for in  table, such as infrastructure maintenance and criminal justice.

Table 2:

State and Local Taxes and Expenditures per Immigrant Household: California

(2002 dollars)

Tax Payments

 

Income tax

$1,181

Property tax

$1,065

Sales tax

  $629

All other

$5,645

Total Payments

$8,521

Expenditures

 

K-12 education

$4,501

Transfers to households

$1,627

All other

$6,216

Total Expenditures

$12,344

Fiscal Deficit (Taxes less spending)

$-3,823

Source: National Research Council, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, 1997. Table 6.3.

 

Edwin S. Rubenstein (email him) is President of ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis.

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