Study hits illegal immigration

WASHINGTON -- Illegal immigrants to the United States cost the federal government more than $10 billion a year, but that figure would increase almost threefold if they were granted legal status, according to a study released yesterday.

The study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank which advocates slowing legal immigration and clamping down on illegal migration, measured the amount of revenue illegal immigrants provide through taxes against the government services they and their families consume.

There are an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

"Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of $10.4 billion," said Steve Camarota, author of the report.

These costs, derived from Census Bureau figures, included Medicaid, which by law provides emergency medical care to illegal immigrants; food assistance programs; and the federal prison system, where roughly 17 percent of inmates are illegal immigrants.

They did not include costs to local and state governments, which would push the deficit much higher, Camarota said.

Earlier this year, President Bush proposed a guest worker program that would allow some people in the United States illegally to acquire legal guest worker status. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has proposed granting an amnesty for most illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years.

But the report said legalizing undocumented immigrants would vastly increase their costs. More would pay taxes, but because the majority are poor, this would be vastly outweighed by the increased government services they would consume.

Camarota said the only effective way to lighten the fiscal burden was to enforce immigration laws by stepping up border patrols and reducing the number of illegal aliens in the country. US laws barring the hiring of illegal immigrants are widely ignored.

Katherine Culliton of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said major sectors of the US economy would collapse without the labor provided by illegal immigrants.

"The US workforce is aging, and we are going to need more and more immigrant labor to keep our economy going," she said. "What we need to do is reform the immigration system to bring them out of the legal shadows."

Other immigration advocates criticized the report for failing to suggest any constructive solutions. "Our legal immigration system is broken," said Michele Waslin, a senior analyst for the National Council of La Raza, a major Hispanic organization.