The Exorbitant Cost of Illegal Immigration

One of the arguments against the border wall is that it costs too much, but the crucial question is not how much a wall would cost but rather what's the cost of not building it.

A website called FairU.S. has run the numbers and the cost is staggering. According to Fair the net cost to the federal government (i.e. the money spent by taxpayers minus the tax revenue paid to the treasury by illegals) far exceeds the $5.7 billion that President Trump has asked for starting construction on the wall, and the fiscal burden incurred by the various state governments is even greater.

The following is from their site:

The Federal government spends $45.8 billion on illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children. This amount includes expenditures for public education, medical care, justice enforcement initiatives, welfare programs and other miscellaneous costs. It also factors in the meager amount illegal aliens pay to the federal government in income, social security, Medicare and excise taxes.

The approximately $46 billion in federal expenditures attributable to illegal aliens is staggering. Assuming an illegal alien population of approximately 12.5 million illegal aliens and 4.2 million U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, that amounts to roughly $2,746 per illegal alien, per year.

For the sake of comparison, the average American college student receives only $4,800 in federal student loans each year.

Since the federal government takes in about 15 billion in tax revenues from illegal aliens the American people pay out approximately 30 billion of goods and services to people who have no legal right to be here. Here's the breakdown:

• Federal Education - $1.6 Billion
• Federal Medical Costs - $17.1 Billion
• Federal Justice Expenditures - $13.1 Billion
• Federal Welfare Programs - $5.8 Billion
• Total Federal Expenditures - $45.8 Billion

But this is just the federal payout. Add in the outlays of the various state and local governments, which come to $88 billion, and the total annual cost to the American taxpayer, not counting the costs to victims of motor vehicle accidents and crime perpetrated by illegal aliens, comes to approximately $116 billion every year.

President Trump asked Congress for a relatively measly $5.7 billion to build a barrier to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across the border in order to relieve this unsustainable expense, and the Democrats, for no discernibly coherent reason, refused.

What's the explanation for this refusal?

If we bracket out cynical explanations for the Democrats' obstinacy - such as they're intent on bankrupting the country, or they just want more Democrat voters in Texas to turn that state blue, or they hate Trump so much that they'll pay any price to avoid helping him - if we eliminate those ignoble reasons then we're left with ........ what?