Immigrants: Net Users of Social Services or Economic Contributors?

by Joe Guzzardi
May 5, 2011

A commonly heard argument advocates make in favor of comprehensive immigration reform is that illegal immigrants work, pay taxes and are therefore entitled to a green card that will put them on a path to citizenship. But a recent report by Steven A. Camarota from the Center for Immigration Studies and titled “Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children” confirmed that although some immigrants work, welfare usage among immigrant-headed households is high and costly to American taxpayers. Immigrants, then, are net users of services rather than contributors.

Among immigration’s supporters, a little discussed problem is that a large percentage who enter the country either legally or illegally are low-income workers with children. This has a predictably negative impact on the nation’s welfare system. Camarota also debunks another theory routinely advanced by the pro-immigration lobby that children who receive welfare will repay it when they become employed adults. Even if such a benefit may exist, it’s a long way into the future and does nothing to offset today’s fiscal costs created by immigrants’ welfare dependency.

According to Camarota’s research, which he based on survey data collected by the Census Bureau from 2002 to 2009, 95.1 percent of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But Camarota also found that more than half (51.8 percent) of legal immigrant-headed households with children use at least one major welfare program compared to only about one-third of native-headed households. Families headed by illegal immigrants rely even more heavily on welfare; 71 percent.

Significantly, among immigrant households with at least one child, 31. 9 percent are headed by an immigrant who has not completed high school contrasted with only 8.9 percent of native-born households without diplomas. Obviously, if workers take home the minimum wage or less, they need federal assistance to survive. By extension, immigrant low earning households with children have higher a dependency on food and cash assistance programs, housing subsidies and Medicaid.

Although Camarota’s findings should be included as part of any Congressional debate about amnesty or the potential on-going increase in legal immigration levels, they will at best get only a passing mention. Congress studiously ignores sound research into the actual costs of adding more immigrants to an already bankrupt nation—and for the obvious reasons. Immigration advocates, both inside and outside the Beltway, know that Americans oppose amnesty. If the details of immigrants‘ extensive welfare usage and its eventual bottom line impact to taxpayers were common knowledge, the outrage would be incalculable.

An excellent example of suppressing data related to immigration’s actual costs occurred in 2007. With S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act on the Senate floor, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector released his report that drew the White House’s wrath but since it received little mainstream media attention never reached the public. While the Bush administration attempted to sell the Senate bill as beneficial to Americans, Rector revealed that amnesty would impose a net annual $89 billion cost to taxpayers. Rector further concluded that over a lifetime each low earning immigrant household would cost taxpayers $1.2 million.

Any federal policy that has long term consequences as serious as America’s ongoing immigration policy has to be discussed openly and honestly, something the Capitol Hill elite refuses to do.

Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns—mostly about immigration and related social issues – since 1990. He is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns have frequently been syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. He can be reached at [email protected].