Calculating the Social Cost of Illegal Immigration
The actual cost of providing social services to illegal immigrants is hard to determine. John Rabe of member station KPCC reports on how much taxpayers spend on health care and education for undocumented aliens.
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MADELEINE BRAND, host:
This is DAY TO DAY, I'm Madeleine Brand.
ALEX CHADWICK, host:
And I'm Alex Chadwick. You may have noticed already, NPR News is doing several pieces this week on the rhetoric surround immigration. Today, John Rabe of member station KPCC examines what happens when schools and hospitals in local communities have to provide services for undocumented immigrants.
JOHN RABE reporting:
I am in East Los Angeles outside County USC Medical Center. Probably better known to listeners across the U.S. as the facade for General Hospital, the famous soap opera. Thousands of people come to this county run hospital every year because of its excellent emergency room and trauma center. Many of those are illegal immigrants.
Mr. BRUCE CHERNOFF (County Health Chief): We did a study that showed that about $340 million of our overall budget was spent on healthcare for individuals who may be undocumented.
RABE: County Health Chief Bruce Chernoff stresses that's only an estimate.
Mr. CHERNOFF: We don't ask for identification as part of providing care for folks. California law requires us to provide care for everybody when they roll through the doors of our emergency room.
RABE: And the federal government reimburses the county only a fifth of the outpatient costs for each illegal immigrant. An industry group estimates illegal immigrants cost California hospitals $800 million a year. But Ira Mehlman of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says it's really almost twice that. Add in Texas and Arizona and you get $2.6 billion. This is why his group supports stiffer penalties for illegal immigrants and the people who employ them.
Mr. IRA MEHLMAN (Federation for American Immigration Reform): They get to hire a low wage worker, we get to pay for the education of the kids, we get to provide the healthcare, we get to provide all the services that people require once they're here.
RABE: FAIR says it's also worried about illegal immigrants spreading TB, tapeworm and even leprosy among the general population. Harry Pachone(ph) head of USC's Tomas Rivera Policy Institute says groups like FAIR use quote "outlandish findings and figures". He says the average illegal immigrant is between 20 and 30, healthy, and not as likely to use public assistance as some others.
Mr. HARRY PACHONE (USC Tomas Rivera Policy Institute): Non-stereotype immigrants are the ones who use it at a higher rate. In other words, it's our refugees that come in from Asia or have come in from Europe that have much higher rates of utilization of healthcare than, for example, Latino immigrants.
RABE: Both sides agree that local and state governments, not the Feds, bare the brunt of the cost of illegal immigration.
(Soundbite of bell ringing)
RABE: Take education. Standard and Poor's analyst Oracio Eldrete(ph) ran the numbers.
Mr. ORACIO ELDRETE (Standard and Poor's): If you take the 1.8 million of undocumented children that are currently estimated to be in the country and take the average annual cost the school districts typically allocate for the students, there's about $11.2 billion in annual costs.
RABE: Eldrete says it's impossible to say how much illegal immigrants pay in property taxes which support schools. But FAIR says it's $1.6 billion in California, only somewhat offsetting the $8 billion illegal immigrants cost the system here. Meanwhile, FAIR says 15% of California school kids are children of illegal immigrants. But LA school spokeswoman Olga Kiniones(ph) says who knows.
Ms. OLGA KINIONES (LA School spokeswoman): That is very difficult for any public organization to actually quantify only because by law any public school in the United States cannot ask for students' illegal status.
(Soundbite of children shouting)
RABE: Tired of the rhetoric? Here's a happy ending. At LA's Sun Valley Middle School groundbreaking is next month for a comprehensive clinic on the school grounds for everyone in the poor Latino neighborhood to use regardless of their immigration status. Theoretically healthier students will go on to make more money and pay higher taxes, and healthier parents will make far fewer emergency room visits, a savings that could pay for the clinic and cut the costs of illegal immigration. For NPR News, I'm John Rabe in Los Angeles.
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Getting a Handle on 'Fuzzy' Immigration Numbers
Efforts to estimate the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States can be tricky. To begin with, any estimate is obviously a snapshot in time. The current estimated range is between 8 million and 20 million people, though almost all reputable sources believe the 8 million mark was surpassed several years ago. The number most commonly cited is between 11 million and 12 million.
That estimate is derived by using what's called the statistical "residual method. Here's how it works:
1 — Take the number of legal immigrants: about 24-25 million. They are relatively easy to track because they have documents such as green cards.
2 — Take the total number of foreign-born persons in the United States: about 35-36-million. That number includes legal immigrants, but it also accounts for other immigrants, as statistically sampled in periodic U.S. Census Bureau surveys (those are interviews done to update the 10-year Census).
3 — Subtract the legal immigrants from the total number of foreign-born immigrants. Illegal immigrants equal roughly 11 million to 12 million.
Demographer Jeff Passell at the Pew Hispanic Center says illegal immigrants are surprisingly forthcoming when interviewed anonymously. Plus, the surveys use statistically valid sampling methods.
An Accurate Picture?
Other sources, such as investigative journalist Donald Barlett, believe the number is an underestimate, because illegal immigrants are wary of authorities and tough to track down.
Barlett cites a report by the investment firm Bear Stearns that estimates as many as 20 million illegal immigrants as of last fall. That report uses micro-economic trends such as housing starts, school population forecasts, and soaring remittances—the amount of money sent back specifically to Mexico.
What Border Patrol Apprehensions Tell Us
The federal government cites the number of Border Patrol apprehensions to gauge the success of current border-enforcement strategy. Here's how the numbers are derived:
When illegal immigrants are caught, they are taken to a processing center, where they are photographed and fingerprinted. Those with criminal records and those who admit they are not from Mexico are detained. The "OTMs" (other than Mexicans) are detained until the can be returned, usually via airplane, to their home country.
Many illegal immigrants are released on their own recognizance, pending a court date. They often disappear into cities. However, the overwhelming majority of those apprehended are Mexican; they are put on a bus and driven to a port of entry on the Mexican border and released to walk a few feet back into Mexico.
Since many of these illegal immigrants come from the deep interior of Mexico, once they are dropped off at the border, they will often try again to enter the United States without authorization. (Some are flown back to Mexico City, but that's a voluntary program.) Immigrants I've interviewed often tell me they had to try two, three, four times or more to enter the U.S. — and eventually they made it in.
Double Counting?
The problem is, each time an illegal immigrant is caught, the Border Patrol counts that person as an apprehension. Same person, three apprehensions — sometimes on the same day. Even the Border Patrol says three people enter the United States illegally for every one person who is caught trying to do so.
Critics such as Douglas Massey, a Princeton University sociologist and expert on Mexican migration, say the apprehension figure is misleading.
"There is virtually nothing one can infer about the volume of illegal migration from the number of apprehensions," Massey told the Arizona Daily Star.
Because those apprehended are photographed and fingerprinted, it seems likely the federal government has statistics — or could compile them — on the number of distinct individuals it catches. But the government has not released those figures for several years. Meanwhile, a number of media outlets continue to use "apprehensions" as interchangeable with "permanently removed."
Immigration vs. Migration
Historically, people have migrated from Mexico illegally for seasonal work, especially in agriculture. No agency tracks those who migrate illegally, but they are not "immigrants" because they do not stay in the United States. Instead, these migrants moved back and forth across the border.
But border security has increased both the risks and the cost of that circular migration. As a result, there is anecdotal evidence that more people are staying in the United States illegally and even sending for their families. But, again, no numbers yet exist that would accurately prove or disprove that theory.
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