New Report Exposes True Cost of Illegal Immigration as Biden Administration Pushes ‘Regular Migration’ App

A new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has revealed that American taxpayers pay at least $151 billion annually to cover the cost of illegal immigration. The 2022 costs represent a 30 percent increase to taxpayers in just five years, with most of the additional costs being added in the past two years due to the Biden administration's de facto open borders policies, which have triggered a historic surge of new illegal migrants pouring across the borders.

According to the report, taxpayers pay $182 billion annually to provide services and benefits to illegal aliens and their dependents, which is offset by about $31 billion in taxes collected from the estimated 15.5 million illegal aliens living in the United States. This brings the net cost to $150.7 billion annually, with the largest component of the cost being K-12 education, which must be provided under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling. The annual K-12 education cost for illegal aliens (and their U.S.-born children) is $78 billion, of which $70.4 billion is borne by states and localities.

In the report, the group also summed up the costs of other services utilized by illegal aliens and discovered the following jarring statistics.

Health care for illegal aliens costs taxpayers about $42.7 billion annually, while a variety of food assistance and nutritional programs used by illegal aliens and their children cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion annually. Combined federal, state, and local criminal justice costs associated with illegal immigration run about $47 billion annually, not including the cost of damages to victims.

Dan Stein, president of FAIR, commented that “most of this enormous financial burden has been inflicted on taxpayers by the open borders advocates at every level of government. Not only is the Biden administration refusing to rein-in illegal immigration or remove the people who are breaking our laws, they are promulgating policies that actually encourage more of it while offering new protections and benefits to those who settle here illegally.” Stein also noted that a growing number of states and localities create their own costly magnets for illegal aliens by declaring themselves sanctuaries and offering new benefits and services.

This report was released today, just days after FAIR's sister organization – The Immigration Reform Law Insitute (IRLI) – filed an amicus curiae or “friend of the court” brief in the case of Texas, et al. v. Department of Homeland Security, against a new app being pushed by the Biden Administration which allows migrants from “Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua—to sign up to enter this country on an app, and then be processed through ports of entry and paroled into the U.S. at the rate of 30,000 per month.”

The Biden Administration argues that by “pre-registering” for entry, these migrants will now be law-abiding.