How Much Would It Cost to Deport Every Undocumented Immigrant?

Recently, I wrote about the inaccuracies and myths surrounding the supposed crime wave that undocumented immigrants have created in America. I will now address that other boogeyman of the illegal immigration debate: the economic burden to our country.

We’ve heard how undocumented workers drive down wages, sponge off social services, and avoid paying taxes. The only problem is that actual statistics proving these ideas are sketchy and often inconclusive. In fact, I’ve written before about numerous studies that show immigrants, even undocumented ones, may actually add more to the economy than they take.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that the undocumented are an economic burden. Let’s go further and say that we’ve found some way (magical or otherwise) to round them all up and deport them.

How much money would America save if we did that?

Well, fortunately, the Center for American Progress has done the math and figured out the economic impact. According to its report, a mass deportation would net the United States a grand total of… negative $285 billion.

Wait a second… those numbers must be off. Maybe they forgot to move the decimal point or carried the three incorrectly or tried to figure it out using short division.

No, that’s the right number. According to CAP, “the federal price tag to deport all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States is prohibitive. The operational feasibility of such a massive effort is dubious at best.”

Now, one could argue that of course it would cost a lot to kick 12 million people out of the country. But after that, the savings would pay for themselves — right?

Actually, the report says that, in addition to the hefty cost upfront, “a mass deportation strategy would have a crippling impact on economic growth,” and while we’re at it, “would likely precipitate widespread human rights and due process violations.”

So now we’re causing human misery as well as costing ourselves tons of money. Hell, if we wanted to do that, we could just invade another Middle Eastern country and be done with it.

Unfortunately for social conservatives, the simplistic idea of “kick ‘em all out” is not fiscally conservative. As such, they face a dilemma. Do they continue to insist that we can banish every undocumented immigrant at no cost to our economy, or do they acknowledge that pursuing this action will mean, according to CAP, “$922 in new taxes for every man, woman, and child in this country”?

I look forward to the next anti-immigration rally where we see the sign "I’m willing to pay $1,000 to get rid of them."

It wouldn’t be sane, but at least it would be honest.

Photo Credit: Adria Richards