National Data | Chart | No-one’s Suggesting Mass Deportation — But It Would Pay For Itself

Federal Taxes and Expenditures per Illegal Alien Household, 2002

Tax Payments

Social Security

$1,687

Income tax

$1,371

Excise and other taxes

$541

Medicare

$446

Unemployment

$83

Corporate income tax

$84

Total Tax Payments

$4,212

Expenditures

Federal prisons, courts, INS

$760

Medicaid

$658

Treatment for uninsured

$591

Food assistance

$499

Federal Aid to Education

$371

Social Security & Medicare

$289

Welfare

$222

Other transfer payments[1]

$442

All Other Expenditures[2]

$3,115

Total Expenditures

$6,949

Deficit (Taxes less expenditures)

$-2,736

Source: Steven A. Camarota, "The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget," CIS, August 2004. Table 2.

a. Earned Income Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit, unemployment, federal disability, higher education assistance, Stafford Student Loans, means-tested programs for refugees. Illegals are assumed to be receiving no federal disability or means-tested programs for refugees.

b. Includes those federal expenditures not accounted for in table, such as infrastructure maintenance and criminal justice.

State and Local Taxes and Expenditures per Immigrant Household: California

(2002 dollars)

Tax Payments

Income tax

$1,181

Property tax

$1,065

Sales tax

$629

All other

$5,645

Total Payments

$8,521

Expenditures

K-12 education

$4,501

Transfers to households

$1,627

All other

$6,216

Total Expenditures

$12,344

Fiscal Deficit (Taxes less spending)

$-3,823

Source: National Research Council, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, 1997. Table 6.3.