Illegal aliens concentrated in ten U.S. states are up to more than five times as likely to be in prison for crimes than American citizens and legal immigrants, a new study reveals.

Research by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) analyzed states with the highest concentration of illegal aliens — including Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington — debunking claims by the big business interests and open borders lobby that the illegal alien population is generally harmless to Americans.

For example, the FAIR study found that in New Jersey, which has a generally small prison population, illegal aliens are about 5.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than American citizens and legal immigrants.

In Arizona, a border state, illegal aliens are about four times as likely to be in prison as Americans and legal immigrants, as well as 3.5 times as likely in Washington, and about 3.7 times as likely in Oregon.

The number of illegal aliens in prison approaches nearly three percent of the state’s entire illegal population, while less than one percent of Americans and legal immigrants are incarcerated as a share of the citizen and legal population.

In California — the state with close to three million illegal aliens — illegal aliens are more than 230 percent more likely to be in prison than Americans and legal immigrants. In New York — with an illegal population of about 873,000 — illegal aliens are nearly 200 percent more likely to be incarcerated than American citizens and legal immigrants.

New Jersey, Arizona, and Oregon outpace all other states when it comes to the percentage of illegal aliens who are more likely to be incarcerated than the citizen and legal population.

For instance, in New Jersey, illegal aliens are 440 percent more likely to be in prison than Americans and legal immigrants. In Arizona, illegal aliens are more than 300 percent more likely to be incarcerated, and in Oregon, they are 267 percent more likely to be in prison.

As Breitbart News has extensively reported, criminal foreigners in federal prison cost American taxpayers about $1.4 billion every year. Likewise, mass immigration to the U.S. from primarily Central America has led to a booming foreign incarcerated population from the region.

Between Fiscal Year 2011 and 2016, about 91 percent of all criminal illegal and legal immigrants in federal U.S. prisons were nationals from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Guatemala, Breitbart News reported.

There are now close to 40,000 criminal illegal and legal immigrants incarcerated in federal prisons across the country, making up about 21 percent of the total federal prison population.

Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million immigrants, with the vast majority deriving from family-based chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.