Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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Speaker 1: Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode
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thank you so much for your support.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did get some messages regarding the last hour's
topic on Twitter. These are peat tweets regarding our sheriff
and the legislation that is now being moved in the
state legislature to try to get him to cooperate with ICE.
Maybe a citizen driven class action lawsuit against Gary not
my fault McFadden along with the governor and the attorney general.
Speaker 1: Maybe that might work.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's part of this legislation push to be able
to sue local jurisdictions. So you know, you put these people,
you know, you put them at risk for litigation to
allow people to sue them if they are victimized by
you know, some illegal alien that you just released because
you wouldn't cooperate with ICE. Maybe that'll get them to
pay attention to It's all a distraction on Twitter. It's
a peat tweet who says it would be interesting to
learn how many millions of dollars Charlotte, Ashville, Raleigh, Greensboro
have spent on illegals in our state. Well, we do
have some numbers. So this morning I went through and
I pulled the prepared testimony of Stephen Camarata, who is
the director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies
or CIS, and this was testimony he provided at a
subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee back in January of
twenty twenty four, and the summary is as follows. Well,
the headline of his testimony is the cost of illegal
immigration to taxpayers.
Speaker 1: And here's the summary.
Speaker 2: Illegal immigrants are a net fiscal drain, meaning they receive
more in government services than they pay in taxes. I
will point out here I have never argued, and I'm
not aware of any real experts that would argue or
have argued, that illegal immigrants do not pay any form
of taxes.
Speaker 1: They do.
Speaker 2: They do pay taxes, different kinds of taxes, and not
a whole lot of them but they do pay certain taxes.
But when you look at the call of services and
then you compare the tax revenue generated, there is a
net plus or minus. And that's what you should be
assessing if we are talking about the costs. That's the
true cost, is the difference between the taxes they pay
and the services they consume that are funded by those
tax dollars.
Speaker 1: This is one of the.
Speaker 2: It's one of the things that gets me into some
trouble with people. They don't appreciate it when I say
stuff like what I'm about to say, But people who
work for government are not taxpayers. They are tax consumers.
They consume the tax dollars. Now they recirculate the tax
dollars into the economy. Yes, absolutely right, But you're not
paying more in taxes than you are receiving because your
paycheck is literally paid for with taxpayer dollars. That is
not to say you're not doing valuable work. And it's
not to say that that those jobs, particularly you know,
law enforcement. Right, that we could not engage in a
free economic market if we did not have the umbrella
of security that you provide, right, So that's I'm not
arguing that that simply.
Speaker 1: Being a tax consumer is bad.
Speaker 2: I'm just pointing out that but for the private sector
that actually generates the tax dollars, right, people who work
for government in whatever level would not be paid. They
would not make any money because all of the money
is paid for by the tax dollars that are produced,
and the people whose paycheck is derived from that coffer
they are quote unquote consuming the tax dollars. Again, this
is not an insult. This, I'm just I'm just stating
a reality that is what occurs. Okay, So you're looking
at the net with illegal immigrants, what they pay in
and what they draw out. Okay, back to the summary
from the testimony. Illegal immigrants actually have high Oh sorry,
let me back, I skip the sentence accidentally.
Speaker 1: Let me back up.
Speaker 2: So this result that they are a net fiscal drain.
The result is not due to laziness or fraud. Illegal
immigrants actually have high rates of work and they do
pay some taxes, including income tax and payroll taxes. The
fundamental reason that illegal immigrants are a net drain is
that they have a low average education level, which results
in low average earnings and low average tax payments. This
is not an insult, right, This is just the data.
It also means a large share of illegal immigrants qualify
for welfare programs, often receiving benefits on behalf of their
US born children. Like their less educated and low income
US born counterparts, the tax payments of illegal immigrants do
not come close to covering the cost they create. So
what is he saying here that this analysis holds true
whether you are an American citizen or you are an
illegal immigrant. The key here is the education level and
the data the research for decades has borne this out.
Lower education attainment, failure to graduate from high school means
that there is usually a profound effect on your ability
to earn income, that has a profound effect on your
ability to pay an income tax, and your ability to
receive various government checks right welfare. And that is irrelevant
whether irrelevant to your legal status citizen, non citizen, doesn't matter.
The key there is the education. This is why when
the Brookings Institute did their big study now probably I
don't know, twenty five years ago, and they offered up
sort of the formula for how to get out of
poverty and how to stay out of poverty. And these
are basic things, and there are things that the government
cannot do for you.
Speaker 1: Right. Number one is graduate high school.
Speaker 2: Graduate high school, and you will be less likely to
be in poverty, and you will be more likely to
get out of poverty if you are in it. Right,
So graduate high school. Number two, have a job, any
job doesn't matter. Just have a job.
Speaker 1: Work. If you do some work, you will develop.
Speaker 2: Some skill, you can move up in the ranks, you
get other opportunities.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It puts you on a trajectory for a more successful
life and career. Number three, do not have kids before
you uh, before you graduate high school? Now, like, these
are very fundamental things and government can't stop you from
having the kid. They can make you finish high school. Right,
if you want to drop out, you can't. Like these
are these are these are societal things that have to
be promoted at the family level, at the neighborhood level,
at the then county and state.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But this is it's a cultural thing. And if you
have a culture that rejects education or celebrates unemployment, or
celebrate or rewards it right, or celebrates having lots of
kids before you graduate high school and out of weblock, well,
it's going to make it more difficult for you to
stay out of poverty, because these things are correlated. All right,
If you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because
it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and
it's a website, and it combines news from around the
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Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So, in his testimony before the Immigration, Integrity, Security, and
Enforcement Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee up on Capitol
Hill back in January of twenty twenty four, Stephen Camarada,
the director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies,
laid out the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers, and
he says in the summary, he says that illegal immigrants
are a net fiscal drain. He says, it means a
large share of the population. Here, the illegal immigrant population
qualify for welfare programs, often receiving benefits on behalf of
their US born children. Like they're less educated and low
income US born counterparts, the tax payments of illegal immigrants
do not come close to covering the cost they create.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: They're preliminary estimates under the Biden administration. Again, he did
this in January of twenty four, so almost a year
before the election of the reelection of Donald Trump, the
illegal immigrant population was pegged at about twelve point eight
million people using the National Academy's estimate of immigrants net
fiscal impact by education level. He said, we estimate that
the lifetime fiscal drain, so taxes paid minus costs for services.
The lifetime drain for each illegal immigrant is about sixty
eight thousand dollars sixty eight thousand dollars, although he points
out there are some caveats here. Illegal immigrants make extensive
use of welfare. Based on government data, they estimate that
fifty nine percent of households headed by illegal immigrants use
one or more major welfare program compared to thirty nine
percent of households headed by the US born population. So
fifty nine percent versus thirty nine percent based on their
use rate of.
Speaker 1: It's unreal.
Speaker 2: Based on their use rate of major welfare programs, we
estimate that illegal immigrants receive forty two billion dollars in benefits,
or about four percent of the total cost of the cash, medicaid,
food and housing programs examined in the study. But this
is only a rough approximation because there are limitations to
the data. Okay, this is one of the things like
if you don't ever look well, you don't find right.
If we're not collecting the data, makes it very difficult
to assess fiscal impacts. Illegal immigrants can receive welfare on
behalf of US born children. Also, illegal immigrant children can
receive school guys out in the hall, all right, don't
understand it's like we work in radio.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 2: Illegal immigrants can receive welfare on behalf of US born children.
Illegal immigrant children can receive school lunch, school breakfasts, and
wicic payments women and infants. I think something to forget
with what it stands for. But it's a welfare program.
A number of states provide medicaid to some illegal immigrants,
and a couple states provide snap food assistance. Several million
illegal immigrants also have work authorization, for example through DACA
TPS some asylum applicants. Right that, then if you have
the work authorization through like the asylum seeking programs, you
could also then get earned income tax credits. The high
welfare use of illegal immigrant households is not explained by
an unwillingness to work. That's not the issue here. They
are willing to work. In fact, ninety four percent of
illegal immigrant households have at least one worker. Ninety four
percent compared to US born households, We're only seventy three
percent have at least one worker. Right, So they have
higher rates of workforce participation than the native born population. However,
America's welfare system is designed to help low wage workers
with children, and that describes a very large share of
illegal immigrant households in addition to consuming welfare. Illegal immigration.
By the way, what do you think is happening here?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Like it's this is the same sort of dynamic that
occurs with the taxation on tips argument. Like for servers, right,
people in restaurants, service workers like that, waiters, waitresses, They
they are paid I forget what it is now, it's
like two three dollars an hour, right, the minimum wage
maybe seven point fifty, but they get paid like three
bucks an hour. Why Well, because they are declaring tips,
which then get taxed. Donald Trump says he wants to
get rid of that tax. So it's essentially free income
for them. Right, But who is that actually subsidizing. It's
subsidizing the restaurant owners because they now don't have to
pay all of the taxes on the payroll, taxes, right
to contribute to social.
Speaker 1: Security and whatnot.
Speaker 2: So they get a break by offering three dollars minimum
wage to their employees.
Speaker 1: They get to dodge those costs.
Speaker 2: And because the employees are making so little money on
the books, they then get to qualify for other types
of programs. In fact, this is the argument that the
left makes regarding, for example, Walmart employees, that we are
subsidizing Walmart because they pay their workers so low that
they qualify to be on government assistance, and so Walmart
is offloading costs onto the taxpayers. The exact same argument
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illegal immigration to taxpayers again from testimony that was provided
to Congress over a year ago, over a year ago,
and it outlines based on all of the data that's available,
and there's there are there are data points that we
truly don't know, like we don't actually know for certain
the like for example, the illegal immigration or illegal alien population.
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 2: We have estimates, and the Center for Immigration Studies has
done its best to you know, figure this out and
calculate the data points. But some of this stuff they
don't collect the data on purpose so has to not
be able to ascertain the true costs. The director of
research for the Center for Immigration Studies, stephen A.
Speaker 1: Camarata.
Speaker 2: He says, in addition to consuming welfare, illegal immigration makes
significant use of public education. Based on average costs per student,
the estimated four million children of illegal immigrants in public
schools created over sixty eight billion dollars in costs in
twenty nineteen. The vast majority of those kids are in
fact US born kids. Okay, but that's the cost of
educating them. Use of emergency medical services is another area
in which illegal immigrants create significant fiscal costs. Prior research
indicates that there are five point eight million uninsured illegal
immigrants in the country in twenty nineteen, accounting for a
little over Again, remember this is data before Biden, before
Biden even opened the floodgates. Right, that five point eight
million uninsured people accounts for more than one fifth of
the total population without health insurance. The cost of providing
healthcare to these people likely costs somewhere in the neighborhood
of about seven billion dollars a year. He points out,
immigrants do pay some taxes. Illegal immigrants pay some taxes, however,
and then they calculate some of that like sixteen billion
social Security about four billion in medicaid. However, as the
net fiscal drain of sixty eight thousand dollars per person
that was cited earlier, the taxes generated are not nearly
enough to cover the cost of the services they receive.
I talked about the difficulty in estimating the total illegal population.
In a recent report, the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed
Customs and Border or CPS data and found that there
were forty nine and a half million immigrants legal and
illegal together in America in October of twenty twenty three.
That is an increase of about four and a half
million from two years prior, and that increase is unprecedented.
The illegal population has likely grown to about twelve point
eight million. All of these numbers represent a net increase.
When he's running through the population changes like these are increases. Okay,
what else?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Welfare programs study published in December of twenty twenty three.
They examined welfare use. You've got the Survey of Income
and Protection, sorry, Survey of Income and Program Participation or SIP. Okay,
this is the report and the programs included in the
analysis are the Earned Income Tax Credit, supplement Security Income SSI,
Temporary aid to needy families, free and reduced price school
lunch and breakfast, women, infants and children, Nutrition Program, Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance program, also food stamps, medicaid and subsidized and
public housing. We estimate fifty nine point four percent of
illegal immigrant households use one or more welfare programs compared
to the US born illegal headed households they use. So,
if you're comparing to US born population, illegal headed households
use every program, every one of those programs at statistically
higher rates except for SSI, housing and the TANF. The
tenth illegal immigrants have a specially high use of the
Earned income tax credit, food programs, and medicaid, and that's
how they get to the forty two billion dollar figure.
Speaker 1: And there are reasons for this.
Speaker 2: Several factors contribute to the welfare use being so high.
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Speaker 2: It's a peat mail from David who says, all right,
so the oh. He's referencing a story that ran in
the top of the hour newscast. He says, so the
small business owner owned by an immigrant. So the owner
is an immigrant in this news story. Says in the
story that the Trump policy is scaring Latinos from buying
things and coming out of their homes. If you're scared
to leave your home, then you've done something illegal or
have entered this country illegally. Right, Sorry, you have to
follow the rules. You have nothing to be afraid of
unless you've done something illegal, right. And Yeah, it's one
of those things where when I hear these types of
stories and I understand from a business perspective, like you
went and opened a business that caters to a certain
population in a certain neighborhood, right, and then this change
in immigration enforcement has now led to a reduction in
your client base. I'm sympathetic to that, right, because you
saw a need in the market, you came in, you
filled the need, you made money doing so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2: However, when you open the business, you knew going in, right,
that this was going to be sort of at the
mercy of government policy, and it was an untenable policy.
It couldn't hold, it was unstable. It would change from
administration to administration. And so if you're going in to
start a business and you're going to cater to an
illegal alien population, you really can't be surprised if the
administration changes, a crackdown occurs, and now you've lost business.
That should have been baked into your market analysis before
you launch the business.
Speaker 1: Again, I can.
Speaker 2: I can sympathize with your loss of clients and customers, absolutely,
but I kind of feel like you should have like
had eyes wide open going in, you know. All right,
So back to this report from Center for Immigration Studies.
There are several factors for why illegal alien populations use
welfare at a higher rate than American born populations.
Speaker 1: Several factors.
Speaker 2: First, most important, more than half of all illegal immigrant
households have at least one US born child on behalf
of whom they can receive the benefits.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's the hook. Okay.
Speaker 2: Second, many states offer medicaid directly to illegal immigrants, not
just the American born children, but also to any illegal alien. Third,
there are six states that also offer food stamp benefits
to illegal immigrants under certain circumstances. Fourth, illegal immigrant kids
have the same eligibility as citizens for free and subsidized
school lunch and breakfast, as well as the Women Infant's
Children Nutrition program under the federal law. Fifth, several million
illegal immigrants have work authorization that provides a Social Security
number and an earned income tax credit eligibility along with it.
This includes those with DACA, the Dreamers right, as well
as the asylum seekers and those granted any kind of
a suspension of deportation. All of these factors, coupled with
the large share of illegal immigrants with modest levels of education,
which results in lower income means a lot more of
them qualify for the welfare programs. Finally, there is a
large welfare bureaucracy whose job it is to help people
qualify and navigate the system. Milton Friedman talked about this
decades ago that most of the programs that people think
of as you know, helping the poor are actually jobs
programs for the middle class because they administer these programs.
For all the reasons that I just listed, the ban
on illegal immigrants directly using most welfare programs is only
going to have very modest effects, and tweaking the restrictions
is not likely to make much of a difference. If
you want to reduce the cost associated with illegal immigrants
use of these types of means tested programs, then you
have to enforce the law and reduce the number of
illegal immigrants in the country in the first place. If
they are allowed to remain, the welfare costs will remain
as well. They're connected, you can't divorce them. I mentioned
public education. Public schools is one of the areas in
which illegal immigration has had the largest impact. Okay, a
decade ago, Pew Research estimated that there are are just
under three quarters of a million illegal immigrants enrolled in
public schools, and then another three point two million US
born children of illegal immigrants in schools. And according to
a study, the follow up study from five years later,
they attempted to update that estimate and what they found
was that there was somewhere about four million children of
illegal immigrants in American schools. The National Center for Education
Statistics reports that in twenty nineteen through twenty twenty, that
school year, the average expenditure per kid, the per pupil
cost to educate a child, was about seventeen thousand dollars
a year. That was from five years ago. Okay, if
you use that estimate, that would put the cost of
educating these kids at sixty eight billion dollars.
Speaker 1: And that is.
Speaker 2: Before the current surge or the Biden surge at the border. Right,
So when you hear people talking about the cost of education,
how they need more money, it is driven a lot
of These costs are driven by illegal immigration policy and
the refusal of people like Gary not my fault macfadden
to help enforce it at the local level. It has
direct impacts on the costs of our schools and it
always has. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
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