During an interview with NPR, President Obama claimed that illegal aliens do not burden taxpayers and are not a drain on public resources.
“If you’re concerned that somehow illegal immigrants are a drain on resources and forcing, you know, Americans to pay for services for these folks, well, every study shows that’s just not the case,” President Obama claimed. “Generally, these folks don’t use a lot of services, and my executive action specifically is crafted so that they’re not a drain on taxpayers; instead, they’re going to be paying taxes, and we can make sure that they are.”
This, however, is not the case. According to a comprehensive study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) in 2012, households headed by illegal aliens were more likely to be on a welfare program than those headed by U.S.-born Americans or legal immigrants.
Illegal aliens also are more likely to be uninsured, therefore, more dependent on relying on emergency rooms for healthcare. According to the CIS study, “14.6 percent of all uninsured persons in the United States are estimated to be illegal aliens or the young children of illegal immigrants.” And in states like Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas, the impact was “much larger,” according to the report: “In Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas, roughly one-fourth of the uninsured are illegal immigrants and their children. In New Jersey, Washington, and North Carolina roughly one-fifth of the uninsured are illegal immigrants.”
Illegal aliens are also a burden on taxpayers by negatively impacting wages, especially those of low-income Americans. As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has repeatedly pointed out, “Harvard professor George Borjas determined that high levels of immigration from 1980 through 2000 resulted in a 7.4% wage reduction for workers without a high school diploma. Similarly, he found current immigration policy resulted in a net wage loss of $402 billion for workers competing directly with immigrant labor.”
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