COST OF ILLEGALS

Here is an example of the true cost of illegals to California.

Currently, there are about 1 million illegal families (with about 2 kids per family give or take) in California. For purposes of this example, and simplicity, we will assume that these 1 million illegal families include 1 dad, 1 mom, and 2 kids.

According to California, it spends around 9 thousand for education per kid. So for our example, each illegal family costs California around 18 thousand per year (or 18 billion in total).

Now if we assume that these illegal families do not have health care insurance; and such is paid for by California, then it is probably conservative to assume that these families cost the State around 15 thousand a year per family for "emergency room" health care. The "wholesale" price of health care for the average family of 4 is around 1500 per month. For most, this expense is paid for in good part by "employers" while the rest is paid for by the "employees." The retail (or emergency care) price of this health care is up to 3 times this. Therefore, assuming that this expense per illegal family is around 15 thousand seems fair for purposes of this example. At 15 thousand per illegal family, this health care expense costs California around another 15 billion dollars.

Now what about the expenses associated with incarcerating around 100 thousand illegals per year in California? At 40 thousand per inmate per year, this adds an additional 4 billion per year.

Now what about the expenses associated with all the infrastructure issues, such as maintaining the roads, dealing with the additional pollution, etc. Who knows what the number is, but for this example, let us assume it is at least 1 billion per year.

How about all the drugs that are brought into California directly from Mexico? How do you measure the expense associated with the fact that most of the big name drugs used in the U.S. are either walked or driven into the U.S. from Mexico? Again, who knows. But we will assume for this example that this costs California another 5 billion a year in crimes, deaths, health related issues, reduced productivity, etc.

In sum, under this example we have around 43 billion in direct expenses to California because of the illegal families now living in the State.

So what do these families give back to California? Well these families must be out earning some money right. Let us assume for this example that each family earns 60 thousand dollars. This is a guess, but it seems fair, give or take.

Now we know that around 50 percent of illegals do not pay taxes, but for this example, let us be very conservative and assume that 100 percent of the illegals pay taxes as they should. Let us further be conservative and assume that these families pay such taxes at an effective rate of 50 percent when you include sales and federal taxes (with 16 of the 50 going to the State).

Under these generous, conservative assumptions this would lead to 30 billion in total taxes (with a portion going directly and indirectly to California). Even, if we assume that 100 percent of these taxes ultimately made it to California then we are still running a 13 billion dollar deficit.

But there must be much more gains to California associated with having a cheap labor force, right? Personally, I would argue that these gains net to zero or thereabouts. First, any money saved by businesses go to these businesses profits and is therefore taxed, etc. However, if these businesses didn't have such a cheap labor force, then such savings would go to the employees as higher wages and be taxed.

Sure, maybe less businesses would be in place, and California's economy might not be growing so fast or be so large, but what would this mean to the average legal family? I would argue that there would be less traffic and a much greater quality of life. After all, how do you measure the cost of an additional hour in traffic a day because of illegals? What is an hour of a person's life worth? How about 250 hours a year?

Therefore, given all the quality of life intangibles, it could be argued that the costs associated with the deteriorating quality of life issues equals the so called "unseen" economic benefits of having this cheap, but illegal labor pool; at least for the average person.

Personally, the quality of life really deteriorated while we were living in California. Further, I never felt or realized any of these so called unseen economic benefits associated with all these illegals. Things still seemed expensive to me; much more expensive than other parts of the country. But it was the quality of life issues that made living in California unacceptable. To much time in traffic, too much pollution, just too many people. And way too many drugs and crimes.

So based on all of these assumptions, California should be experiencing around a 13 billion dollar deficit per year directly associated with its illegal families. Now this only equates to around 450 dollars per legal individual (including minors), but 13 billion is still a large sum of money. And I am sure each family of 4 could use that additional 2 thousand dollars each year.

Even though this is an example, we do know that California is running an overall deficit this year of around 14.5 billion. So maybe there is some truth in the numbers above?

I bet when you consider the huge amount of drugs coming into the U.S. from Mexico, and the quality of life issues, there are many more negatives associated with our "open border" policy. What about the thousands of people that die each year from the drug usage associated with the drugs coming across the border? The U.S. Census states that 20 thousand people die nationwide directly from illegal drug use each year. How many of these deaths are associated with the drugs coming across the border? 10, 20, 30 percent? How many of these deaths could be eliminated with a tougher border policy? I bet we could save at least a 1000 lives each year.

So what do you think?