[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 93 (Tuesday, July 12, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H5710-H5711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE COST OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ON THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to the issue of 
illegal immigration that is perhaps the most important concern to my 
Texas constituents.
  I want to address just one matter, the cost. Government and academic 
estimates indicate there are 9 to 11 million illegal people living in 
the United States. Immigration officials estimate that the illegal 
population grows by as many as 500,000 a year; some say 4,000 a day 
cross into Texas from their southern border.
  Someone pays for this illegal activity, and that somebody is the 
American public, not the illegal immigrants. There is a tremendous 
strain on local and State communities because of unrestricted illegal 
immigration throughout Texas and the entire United States.
  While it is the Federal Government's responsibility to control 
immigration, it is the people of the States and local communities that 
pay the cost. They are the victims of illegal immigration. Those 
Americans spend millions of tax dollars on education, health care, and 
criminal justice for those that are here illegally.
  Donald Huddle, a Rice University economics professor, has done a 
study that estimated the cost that we pay for illegals in this country. 
This chart here shows that the American public pays approximately $32 
billion a year for the cost of illegal immigrants, such as public 
education. It is about $5 billion Americans pay.
  Social security, $3 billion. Medicaid, $3 billion. Total cost to 
American taxpayers, about $32 billion a year we pay the cost of illegal 
immigration. When this study was done, the population of illegals in 
the United States was about 5 million. Now the population has doubled, 
and the costs have more than doubled.
  Besides these stunning costs, Americans have to pay for their own 
health care and their own education of their own kids. Many Americans 
cannot afford these costs for their own families, but they are made to 
pay the same costs for illegals.
  Mr. Speaker, education, public safety and basic health care are the 
roles provided primarily by our States and local communities. U.S. 
taxpayer dollars on the local level are used to pay for these services. 
Yet these communities are continuing to absorb more and more demand for 
these services while the resources to provide them cannot keep up.
  I would like to specifically point out some of the costs that 
citizens must provide: one, health care. Emergency rooms, the most 
expensive health care system, are used by illegal immigrants because of 
the compassion of Americans. We do not turn people down at these 
hospitals. If the immigrants do not pay, Americans pay.
  Some trauma centers in urban areas have closed because they cannot 
absorb the costs to pay. People are in the system who do not contribute 
to it financially.
  In Michigan, 23 criminal cases were filed alleging that pregnant 
women from Syria, Lebanon and Yemen flew into the United States, 
falsified information on Medicaid forms to cover those costs of 
delivering their babies,

[[Page H5711]]

and then returned to their native countries within a few months. 
Americans paid for all of this criminal activity. Also, the quality of 
health care will diminish because those in the system are not paying 
their way.
  Second, education. The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that all kids in 
the United States would be provided a free education. This cost 
continues to rise due to the fact that Americans are paying for and 
educating kids illegally in the United States.
  Local property taxes continue to rise. And the quality of education 
will suffer. Why? Because there are people receiving from the education 
system, but are not contributing to it financially. Those are people 
that are here illegally.
  Just last year, California spent over $7 billion a year educating 
illegal immigrant children. Once again, our compassion for others is to 
the detriment of our own kids.
  In the criminal justice system, where I was a judge in Harris County, 
over 20 percent of the people in jail were illegally in the United 
States. Americans provided those individuals a defense attorney, a 
court system, a trial, and they paid for the incarceration if those 
individuals were convicted.
  Who pays for this? Americans. Americans always pay. Mr. Speaker, 
everybody wants to live in the United States, but not everybody can 
live here. We need rules that are fair, and people must respect our 
rule of law and our borders.
  American taxpayers cannot afford to pay for those here illegally who 
use our health care facilities, our education systems, and go through 
the criminal justice system.
  The failure of this Congress to act on correcting our broken 
immigration system trickles down to the communities which we all 
represent, especially those of us who represent border States. The 
American taxpayer is funding illegals, and we must put a stop to the 
problem sooner rather than later.

                              {time}  1900

  If we continue to offer free education, health care services and 
provide a criminal justice system, are we not encouraging more illegals 
to come to the United States?
  This just ought not to be.

             1996 COSTS TABLE FROM THE HUDDLE STUDY PROGRAMS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Education K-12..............................       $5,850,000,000
Public Higher Education............................          710,000,000
ESL and Bilingual Education........................        1,220,000,000
Food Stamps........................................          850,000,000
AFDC...............................................          500,000,000
Housing............................................          610,000,000
Social Security....................................        3,610,000,000
Earned Income Tax Credit...........................          680,000,000
Medicaid...........................................        3,120,000,000
Medicare A and B...................................           58,000,000
Criminal Justice and Corrections...................           76,000,000
Local Government...................................        5,000,000,000
Other Programs.....................................        9,250,000,000
                                                    --------------------
    Total Costs....................................      $32,740,000,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                     

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