(September 13, 2022, Washington, D.C.) — According to a new cost analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), providing for the needs of illegal aliens who entered the country under President Biden adds an additional $20.4 billion annual burden on American taxpayers. This figure is in addition to the well over $140 billion a year cost burden taxpayers are already bearing to provide benefits and services for the longer-term illegal alien population.
The Biden administration has willingly released approximately 1.3 million illegal aliens into the country’s interior after removals and Title 42 expulsions are accounted for. Add to this figure approximately 1 million “gotaways” according to FAIR’s sources within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and it can be safely estimated that approximately 2.3 million illegal aliens successfully entered the country’s interior after President Biden took office.
Based on the most recent comprehensive cost study, FAIR conservatively estimates that each illegal alien costs American taxpayers $9,232 per year.
“Even in an age in which trillion dollar spending packages are considered modest, the additional $20.4 billion the Biden Border Crisis has heaped onto the backs of American taxpayers is still staggering,” noted Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “$20.4 billion could address some very important needs of the American public, instead of covering the costs of the surge of illegal migration triggered by this administration’s policies.”
The $20.4 billion that taxpayers will spend this year, on just the illegal aliens who have entered the country in the last year and half, could cover the cost of:
- Providing every homeless veteran in America $50,000 per year for a decade. This would effectively end veteran homelessness.
- Giving every family in America earning $50k or less a grocery voucher of roughly $410.
- Providing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to more than 7 million additional needy families.
- Funding and expanding the entire National School Lunch Program.
- Hiring more than 315,000 police officers to combat rising crime across the country.
- Hiring of 330,000 new teachers, which would easily end the long-standing teacher shortage in America.
- Construction of nearly the entire Southern Border Wall (which could prevent millions more illegal aliens from entering).
“According to another new report, 35 percent of U.S. families with a full-time worker struggle to meet their basic needs. These are the people President Biden pledged to champion. Instead, he is choosing to divert an additional $20.4 billion away from their needs, in order to fund a radical open borders agenda with no end in sight,” concluded Stein.
Read Original Release on FairUS.org
