the cost of immigration

      

What is the cost of immigration?   A better question might be what is the cost of bringing up the next generation of U.S. citizens?  Most estimates that put poor immigrants as a drag on the economy are misleading.  For the cost they present the average cost per person of public goods.  Do we assume that for each unauthorized immigrant removed there would be a savings of that average cost?  That would be unlikely.  The real cost and savings would not be the average cost but the marginal cost.  In most cases of public goods that would be close to zero.  With fewer people and not much savings, the average per person cost for public goods would likely increase.  Since the crackdown on unauthorized immigration began almost four years ago the average per person cost of most public goods has gone up. 

For most states, federal taxes paid average about 8,000 dollars per person.  California provides twenty percent of federal revenues and it also has twenty percent of the population.  In Missouri, federal taxes average about 8,000 per person as well, but the population is much smaller. 

Social Security has been particularly impacted by the loss of millions of low income workers.  The connection between not enough workers in ratio to retirees could not be more directly related to immigration.  Having people contribute to the system with no expectation or claim to future benefits was likely the best deal on bailing out Social Security we will ever get.  Having a lot more authorized immigrants might be a close second. 

Outside the realm of public goods, immigrants offer exceptional stimulus because the process of setting up a household is expensive.  One million new immigrants spending 10,000 to set up a household during the first year in the United States would create a 10 billion dollar stimulus for the economy.