A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals savings created by reducing illegal immigration through an effective border wall could save taxpayers $64 billion over the next ten years.
Even a small reduction in the numbers of illegal border crossings could save enough money to pay for the estimated $12 to $15 billion cost of building the wall promised by President Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. The conclusions of the analysis by CIS’ Director of Research Dr. Steven Camarota are based on fiscal estimated developed by the Naional Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS). The NAS calculated the fiscal impact of impacts – taxes paid minus costs, Camarota wrote.
Camarota offers the following conclusions from his study:
- There is also agreement that immigrants who come to America with modest levels of education create significantly more in costs for government than they pay in taxes.
- A recent NAS study estimated the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) of immigrants by education. Averaging the cost estimates from that study and combining them with the education levels of illegal border-crossers shows a net fiscal drain of $74,722 per illegal crosser.2
- The above figures are only for the original illegal immigrants and do notinclude any costs for their U.S.-born descendants. If we use the NAS projections that include the descendants, the fiscal drain for border-crossers grows to $94,391 each.
- If a border wall prevented 160,000 to 200,000 illegal crossings (excluding descendants) in the next 10 years it would be enough to pay for the estimated $12 to $15 billion costs of the wall.
- Newly released research by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) done for the Department of Homeland Security indicates that 170,000 illegal immigrants crossed the border successfully without going through a port of entry in 2015.3While a significant decline in crossings from a decade ago, it still means that there may be 1.7 million successful crossings in the next decade. If a wall stopped just 9 to 12 percent of these crossings it would pay for itself.
- If a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion — several times the wall’s cost.
The report of fiscal costs of immigrant border crossers is based on “net present value” (NPV). This process has a net effect of reducing the size of the net drain on economic resources based on their education level. “Rhe actual net lifetime fiscal cost of illegal border-crossers, given their education levels, is possibly $140,000 to $150,000 each in their lifetimes if the NPV concept is not used,” Camarota stated.
A copy of the complete report is attached below.