According to a recent study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Illinois’ illegal alien population costs the state’s taxpayers $3.5 billion (that’s $3,500,000,000) every year for education, medical care, and incarceration.  The additional tax burden caused by illegals equates out to $695 per Illinois household headed by a native-born resident.

The more than $3.5 billion in costs incurred by Illinois taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:

• Education. Based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population in Illinois and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Illinoisans spend more than $3.1 billion annually on education for the children of illegal immigrants. This estimate does not include programs for limited English students, remedial educational programs or breakfast and lunch programs available to students from low-income families. An estimated 10 percent of the K-12 public school students in Illinois are children of illegal aliens.
• Health care. Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state’s illegal alien population amount to an estimated $340 million a year.
• Incarceration. The uncompensated cost of incarcerating deportable illegal aliens in Illinois state and local prisons amounts to about $55 million a year. This estimate includes only prison costs and not short-term or other detention costs, related law enforcement and judicial expenditures, or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to incarceration.

The fiscal costs of illegal immigration borne by state taxpayers do not end with these three major cost areas. The total local cost of illegal immigration is considerably higher if other cost areas such as preventive health programs, special English instruction, interpretation services in courts and hospitals, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers are also calculated.

The full report is available in pdf format. 

This entry [Permalink] was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 10:47 am.
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