Costs of Illegal Immigration to Illinoisans

Executive Summary

Analysis based on current estimates of the illegal alien population residing in Illinois indicates that population costs the state’s taxpayers more than $3.5 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. That annual tax burden amounts to about $695 per Illinois household headed by a native-born resident. Even if the estimated $465 million in sales, income and property taxes collected from illegal immigrants are subtracted from the fiscal outlays, net costs still amount to more than $3 billion per year.

The three cost areas discussed in this analysis (education, health care and incarceration resulting from illegal immigration) are the major cost areas. They are the same three program areas analyzed in a 1994 study conducted by the Urban Institute, which provides a useful baseline for comparison. Other studies have been conducted in the interim, showing trends that support the conclusions of this report.

Even without accounting for all of the numerous other areas in which costs associated with illegal immigration are being incurred by Illinois taxpayers, the program areas analyzed in this study indicate that the burden is substantial and that the costs are rapidly increasing.

The more than $3.5 billion in costs incurred by Illinois taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:

• Education. Based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population in Illinois and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Illinoisans spend more than $3.1 billion annually on education for the children of illegal immigrants. This estimate does not include programs for limited English students, remedial educational programs or breakfast and lunch programs available to students from low-income families. An estimated 10 percent of the K-12 public school students in Illinois are children of illegal aliens.


• Health care. Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state’s illegal alien population amount to an estimated $340 million a year.


• Incarceration. The uncompensated cost of incarcerating deportable illegal aliens in Illinois state and local prisons amounts to about $55 million a year. This estimate includes only prison costs and not short-term or other detention costs, related law enforcement and judicial expenditures, or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to incarceration.

The fiscal costs of illegal immigration borne by state taxpayers do not end with these three major cost areas. The total local cost of illegal immigration is considerably higher if other cost areas such as preventive health programs, special English instruction, interpretation services in courts and hospitals, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers are also calculated.

If illegal immigrants were able to obtain legal work status as currently advocated by the Bush administration, and/or eventual permanent residence and possible citizenship as currently proposed in both houses of Congress, state income tax collections might increase, but this likely would be outweighed by increased use of public services to low-income families. In addition, the possibility for family members of the current illegal alien population to come to the United States to reunite families would increase the size of the poverty and near-poverty population using public services.

The full report is available in pdf format.