FAIR Illegal Immigration Cost Study Featured in Congressional Budget Hearing

On May 8, the House Budget Committee held a hearing to examine the cost of the border crisis. The hearing highlighted FAIR’s extensive research on the financial costs of illegal immigration. During the hearing, members of the committee repeatedly cited FAIR’s June 2023 study examining the costs of illegal immigration. That report found the net cost of illegal immigration to be at least $150.7 billion annually — an uptick of nearly $35 billion since 2017. Since that report was completed a year ago, some 2.5 million new illegal aliens entered the U.S., further driving up the costs to American taxpayers.

Julie Kirchner, FAIR’s executive director, served as an expert witness at the hearing. During her testimony, she described how the chaos at the border and the Biden administration’s open-border policies are imposing record costs on American taxpayers. In her opening statement, Kirchner argued, “It does not have to be this way. Americans need not be paying billions of dollars as a result of illegal immigration. This is a man-made crisis. From the moment the Biden Administration took office, it tore down all programs and policies designed to deter illegal immigration.”

Ms. Kirchner’s testimony specifically focused on the cost of the Biden administration’s illegal parole programs, through which millions of inadmissible aliens are being allowed to enter the United States. Parolees, who are illegal aliens despite having been paroled into the U.S., present added costs to U.S. taxpayers. Kirchner pointed out to the committee that parolees are immediately eligible for work permits, Social Security numbers, Obamacare, and tax credits. Additionally, after a five-year waiting period, parolees can receive benefits under Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for the Needy Families (TANF), and Federal Student Aid. Further, Cuban and Haitian parolees are exempt from that five-year waiting period.

In an exchange with Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas), Kirchner explained that “Parole has become a shadow immigration system. It is essentially supplanting the family and employment-based systems. They’ve created a completely separate system for hundreds of thousands of people who have no legal basis to enter this country.”

The impacts associated with the Biden administration’s rampant abuse of parole authority are laid out in another report by FAIR, Immigration Parole: The Executive Branch’s Shadow Immigration System, issued in March of this year.

FAIR’s testimony on the costs of illegal immigration prompted immediate action on the part of the committee. Following the hearing, Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) requested that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) undertake a full report on the direct spending effects of increased migration on the federal budget, and specifically its impact on entitlement programs. CBO’s analysis only looks at economic and revenue contributions from illegal aliens without considering the staggering costs of illegal immigration because the cost associated with illegals is “uncertain.” Arrington argued in his request to CBO that the office’s failure to account for the costs of illegal immigration “amounts to a serious deficiency,” that needs to be rectified.