Study Finds Trump’s Wall Could Pay For Itself More Than 8 Times Over

Brittany M. Hughes | February 16, 2017
DONATE
Font Size

In a blow to left-wing amnesty advocates who say President Donald Trump's proposed border wall would be fiscally irresponsible, a new study out from the Center for Immigration Studies has found that President Donald Trump's proposed border wall only has to stop about nine to 12 percent of all illegal alien border crossers to pay for itself over the next 10 years.

In fact, the amount of money the United States would save by preventing illegal immigration at the U.S. border over next ten years could end up paying for the border wall about eight times over, according to this analysis.

CIS noted that according to data from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), the average illegal alien who crosses the border creates a net drain of about $75,000 over the course of their lifetime in the United States. This is often caused by the fact that most illegal alien border-crossers have little to no English language skills, low education levels and are usually unskilled workers. Though they may work and even pay taxes over the course of their lives, they end up using more in taxpayer-provided services and benefits than they ever put into the system – and that’s without factoring in the cost of their U.S.-born children.

The report explains:

A recent NAS study estimated the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) of immigrants by education. Averaging the cost estimates from that study and combining them with the education levels of illegal border-crossers shows a net fiscal drain of $74,722 per illegal crosser.

Based on this estimate, CIS added, “illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden of approximately $74,722 during their lifetimes, excluding any costs for their U.S.-born children.

CIS added that another 1.7 million illegal aliens are expected to cross the Southwest U.S. border over the next decade, based on recent trends in illegal immigration.

Therefore, “If a border wall stopped between 160,000 and 200,000 illegal crossers — 9 to 12 percent of those expected to successfully cross in the next decade — the fiscal savings would equal the $12 to $15 billion cost of the wall,” the immigration think tank noted.

“If a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion — several times the wall's cost,” the report added.

Of course, this doesn’t solve the problem of the millions of aliens who enter the country legally and overstay their visas, CIS noted. But it does help prevent hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from coming into the United States via our open border each year.

Now, let’s be extreme optimists and say the border wall were 100 percent effective and ended up preventing the estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens expected to cross the southwest U.S. border over the next decade. By CIS’s figures, that would save the United States about $127.5 billion – more than eight times the cost of a $15 billion-dollar wall.

donate