Study: Illegal immigrant education costs states millions

[Kelly4C]

Missouri spends about $21.4 million a year and Illinois spends $484 million a year to educate school-aged illegal immigrants, according to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Nationally, taxpayers pay $7.4 billion a year to educate 1.1 million school-aged illegal immigrants, FAIR said. Costs were figured using government estimates of the illegal alien population and each state's per-pupil expenditure. Costs do not include supplemental services such as English as a Second Language, bilingual education or limited English proficiency programs.

Illinois ranked No. 5 among all U.S. states for the amount spent on illegal immigrant education, FAIR said. The money spent in Illinois is enough to supply healthcare to every person under the poverty line for two years or to supply financial aid to the nearly 34,000 college students denied it, and 400,000 additional applicants, FAIR said.

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2003/08/18/daily43.html


No wonder I feel so strongly about this issue. I live in IL. One of the hardest hit. And we already have some of the highest taxes in the country.

Kelly>>> Been trying to get family to move down South with me

[HisAlways]

Yep....add this to what their "free healthcare" costs us, and we could end our huge national deficit.

[Issachar]

Well, this 7.4 billion for education plus about 1.5 billion for healthcare, both annually, is hardly going to wipe out the US 2 billion per day deficit, but it would make a dent. It would take care of the first 4.5 days of the year. :)

Issachar

[HisAlways]

Well, this 7.4 billion for education plus about 1.5 billion for healthcare, both annually, is hardly going to wipe out the US 2 billion per day deficit, but it would make a dent. It would take care of the first 4.5 days of the year. :)

Issachar

Your figures are for California ALONE !!In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.

Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.


Imagine the total for the whole country.:doh

[Jaybird74]

Your figures are for California ALONE !!


Imagine the total for the whole country.:doh

Yeah, I live in Cali - and I've tried to relay this to others, both in person and on this bulletin board. And yet even here, some have alluded to the fact that I wasn't being compassionate towards these poor souls just looking to make a better life - even when my tax dollars are going to support these people. I mean, how much more compassionate should I be - give them my ENTIRE paycheck? Oh, I'm sorry - retain a bit for myself so I can go take Spanish classes so that I can communicate with THEM on MY country's soil.

:rolleyes

And yet comprehensive reform (aka amnesty) is the answer. So what happenes when these illegals become citizens? The jobs they're doing now won't be paying them enough, since they're citizens and entitled to healthcare, legal wages, etc. Of course, since they're going to be taxed, they're also entitled to Social Security benefits.

Queue the next wave of illegals - to do the jobs that the previous illegals/now citizens via amnesty won't do. Oh, there's a wall being built? Never mind - fiscal resources to continue building it just got sacked. Plus, Calderon from south of the Rio Grande compared it to the Berlin Wall - so we can't have THAT on our hands . . . .

It's like we hever learned from the 1986 amnesty mistakes.

[Issachar]

Ya, I don't get the numbers game. I found one link that said 1.1 billion per year for illegal immigrant healthcare and another that said 10.4 billion. The OP said 7.4 billion nationally for the education part. So even if it is 20 billion annually on a national scale, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to a 2 billion dollar per day deficit; 365 days per year. It still should be addressed. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. It's just that there are obviously a multitude of issues that money is being spent on that the US does not have. What I don't get is that NO politicians seem to think it matters as to how large the national debt is. Not a one of them expresses concern in a manner that will cause anyone to care. So jokingly, I like to say that if we go by our leaders attitude towards national debt, we can just fund anything, anytime, anywhere and simply put it on the tab; the tab that never gets paid and never seems to matter how big it is.

A few folks have mentioned that it doesn't matter because we owe that debt to ourselves. I'm not sure if that is exactly accurate, but they did say "since we owe it to ourselves". (That's not actually true totally because we owe a lot, as a nation, to other countries. The US has been a debtor nation for a long time now.) I don't follow that reasoning because debt is debt and debt demands payment. The laws of economics cannot be violated and the violator survive. One may as well go outside and slam there fist into a telephone pole as hard as they possibly can and hope to knock it over.

Issachar - thinking that last comment hurts just thinking about it. :)