DEPORTATION COSTS

A number of Corporation grantees use economic analysis to inform the immigration policy debate. They are learning that it is much more expensive to tackle immigration as a law enforcement problem, the nation’s de facto policy approach, than it is to address it as an economic policy problem. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan group that focuses on global immigration issues, published a report in 2013, Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery, which found the U.S. government now spends more on its immigration enforcement agencies than on all other federal law enforcement agencies combined—nearly $18 billion in 2012, compared with just over $14 billion on the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshal Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

REFORM BENEFITS

Enforcement includes everything from visas and workplace enforcement to border security, detention, and deportation. CAP analyzed what it would cost to deport the 5.2 million undocumented immigrants currently allowed to stay under the deferred action policies—DACA, DAPA, and the expanded DACA program—that were announced by President Obama in November of 2014, and found it would cost the country more than $50.3 billion dollars (an average cost of $10,070 per person). If the United States were to take the draconian step of deporting all 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the country it could cost as much as $114 billion dollars.

By contrast, if the U.S. would allow those immigrants to stay and work legally, it would add a cumulative $1.2 trillion dollars to the gross domestic product (GDP) over ten years and increase the earnings of all Americans by $625 billion dollars, according to another CAP report. Without fear of deportation, immigrants are less vulnerable to exploitation and more productive, spending more and generating more tax revenue.

TEXAS DREAMERS

In Texas almost 51 percent of the state’s 1.5 million undocumented immigrants are eligible for the deferred action programs. According to a state-by-state analysis by CAP, if that population were allowed to work legally over the next decade they would generate an increase of $38.3 billion in the Texas GDP. And yet legislators in Texas tried to repeal that state’s DREAM Act, which allows a number of undocumented high school students to qualify for in-state tuition at Texas colleges.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), another grantee, played a significant role in the effort to educate policymakers and the media about the economic consequences of preventing DREAMers from qualifying for lower tuition. Strong data provided by CBPP and its Texas partner, the Center for Public Policy Priorities, helped undocumented students, advocates, and some of the state’s leading business groups successfully make their case and prevent the repeal. The economic analysis was available through a network coordinated by CBPP, the State Priorities Partnership. Texas, however, continues to challenge the expansion of the DACA and DAPA programs that cover more than 5 million people, including 746,000 Texans.

America's Story: An Immigrant Story