President Trump has declared the nation’s southern border a national emergency after Democrats on Capitol Hill refused to negotiate on building the border wall.
The cost of not building the wall for the country is high – both in actual dollars and in criminal activity. It’s also staggeringly high for the states, in particular, California and battleground states like North Carolina. For these states, the annual cost is in the billions.
The financial burden on the taxpayer is enormous and spans every area of possible spending from healthcare to education.
In 2017, it was reported by the Federation for Immigration Reform that approximately 12.5 million illegal aliens and 4.2 million children of illegal aliens were costing taxpayers just under $135 billion a year.
The report puts the cost of states of Texas, New Mexico, California, and Arizona to patrol their portions of the border at $490,780,000 annually.
According to the Federation For Immigration Reform’s report, illegal aliens were only contributing around $18.9 million to the tax base, which when subtracted from the $135 million cost, leaves taxpayers on the hook for around $116 million. That translates to approximately $8,075 per illegal alien and citizen child prior to taxes paid, or $6,940 per person after taxes.
On the federal level, medical ($17.14 billion) is by far the highest cost, with law enforcement coming second ($13.15 billion) and general government services ($8 billion) third.
At the state and local level, education ($44.4 billion) was by far the largest expense, followed by general public services ($18.5 billion) and medical ($12.1 billion).
The top three states based on total cost to state taxpayers for illegal immigrants and their children: California ($23 billion); Texas ($10.9 billion), and New York ($7.5 billion).
The report broke down the costs by federal and state level and the results were staggering. The net impact of illegal aliens at the state level was $85 billion.
North Carolina taxpayers were estimated to be paying just under $2.5 billion a year, or $4,630 per illegal alien. These totals imply that there are roughly 526,558 illegal aliens in the state.
According to the same report, Tennessee’s illegal alien population was costing the taxpayer $4,395 per illegal alien or over $793 million for a total of 180,527 illegal aliens. To the North, Virginia’s illegal alien population costs taxpayers over $2.248 billion.
In 2015, Governor Pat McCrory signed into law the “Protect North Carolina Workers Act” (HB318) that prohibits municipalities from implementing sanctuary city ordinances. The bill also requires E-Verify compliance in certain state contracts and rejects consular documents as a means of official identification.
But a law like HB 318 isn’t deterring illegal aliens from settling in the Tarheel state when they’ve already broken federal law just coming over the border.
In 2016, Pew Research estimated that there were around 10.7 million illegal aliens in the United States, with 2.2 million of them in California and 1.6 million in Texas. The estimated number of illegal aliens in the country has jumped by more than 2.5 million since that report.
In battlegrounds states in the Southeast, Pew’s 2016 estimate showed 325,000 illegal aliens in North Carolina. That estimate has leaped to over half a million in just two years.
That 325,000 represented 3.1% of the state’s total population and 4.5% of the state’s labor force and showed that 8.9% of North Carolina’s k-12 population are children of illegal aliens.
Next door and to the North of North Carolina, Pew estimated 130,000 illegal aliens in Tennessee and 285,000 in Virginia.
Numbers released in 2017 ranked North Carolina number 7 in the nation for young illegal aliens in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program with 27,385 approved applications.
A study done the same year by the University of California at San Diego raised the issue of identity theft by DACA recipients and illegal aliens. The study showed that 44 percent of approximately 800,000 illegal aliens in the Obama era DACA program had been working in the U.S. without valid Social Security numbers.
Illegal aliens also represent a significant public safety risk that could be ameliorated by the proposed Wall and upgrades in border security.
A 2014 draft study conducted by ICE found that during an 8-month time frame from January 2014 to August 2014 8, there were 8,811 declined detainers on 8.145 individuals.
The draft study showed that 1,867 of the 8,145 individuals were later re-arrested a total of 4,298 times and racked up 7,491 charges. What’s more disturbing is that 5,132 of them had prior criminal records or convictions.
2,984 had felony arrests or convictions and 1,909 had misdemeanor charges or convictions that ranged from assault and sexual abuse or exploitation to drug charges and public safety threats. Another 239 had three or more misdemeanor convictions.
The ICE report does not deep-dive into the actual crimes, but one website in North Carolina does. The North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFIRE) has recorded sexual assault arrests of illegal aliens in the state going back to 2014.
In 2018 alone, NCFIRE reported 215 illegal aliens were arrested and on over 740 charges.
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A.P. Dillon is the North Carolina Bureau Chief for The Tennesee Star and a reporter at Battleground State News. Follow A.P. Dillon on Twitter. Email Tips to [email protected].Â
