The pro-amnesty American Action Forum (AAF) found it would cost the federal government $400 to $600 billion to remove all illegal aliens currently living in the United States within a two year period and to prevent all future unlawful entry.

In its research paper, AAF examined the personnel and infrastructure implications of removing all 11.3 million illegal aliens in a two-year time frame. In order to remove all illegals, each each one would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to their country of origin. In order to remove all illegals in two years, the U.S. government would have to expand each of those stages of the removal process.

The current annual budget for U.S. Customs and Border Protection is $13.5 billion. This does not include the costs of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies dealing with apprehending, detaining and processing illegals on a daily basis.

Based upon FY 2013 levels it would require:

Federal immigration apprehension personnel to increase from 4,844 positions to 90,582 positions;

The number of immigration detention beds to increase from 34,000 to 348,831;

The number of immigration courts to increase from 58 to 1,316;

The number of federal attorneys legally processing undocumented immigrants to increase from 1,430 to 32,445; and

A minimum of 17,296 chartered flights and 30,701 chartered bus trips each year.

George Fuller, an expert on immigration issues, notes, “Put in E-Verify and take away Childbirth citizenship and they will self deport. There will be no rounding up necessary. The AAF report is designed to make people think we have to accept them being here because the cost to deport them is high, but that is not true. When they get hungry they will leave. The same goes for visa over stayers!”

The Federation for America Immigration Reform (FAIR) in a 2013 study estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level.

The FAIR study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.

Key Findings of the FAIR study:

Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. The bulk of the costs — some $84 billion — are absorbed by state and local governments.

The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers is an average amount per native-headed household of $1,117. The fiscal impact per household varies considerably because the greatest share of the burden falls on state and local taxpayers whose burden depends on the size of the illegal alien population in that locality

Education for the children of illegal aliens constitutes the single largest cost to taxpayers, at an annual price tag of nearly $52 billion. Nearly all of those costs are absorbed by state and local governments.

At the federal level, about one-third of outlays are matched by tax collections from illegal aliens. At the state and local level, an average of less than 5 percent of the public costs associated with illegal immigration is recouped through taxes collected from illegal aliens.

Most illegal aliens do not pay income taxes. Among those who do, much of the revenues collected are refunded to the illegal aliens when they file tax returns. Many are also claiming tax credits resulting in payments from the U.S. Treasury.

Read the FAIR full report here.

It appears from the two reports that the costs of deporting all illegals would be recouped within 4 to 6 years.

The AFF report notes that, “[I]n just two years it would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1 trillion.” However, this does not take into account the reduction of payments to those not working by the government, who would now be able to back fill those jobs opened by the mass deportation of illegals.

Please leave your comments on this column. There are two options, the status quo or deportation. Which would be better for America and American workers?

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