We Could Pay for the Wall By Stopping Only This Amount of Illegal Border Crossings

If President Donald Trump’s proposed Mexican border wall stopped just nine to 12 percent of illegal aliens from entering the country over the next 10 years, the savings would pay for the wall, even if it cost $15 billion.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report based on data from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS).

“There is agreement among researchers that illegal immigrants overwhelmingly have modest levels of education — most have not completed high school or have only a high school education,” the report read. “There is also agreement that immigrants who come to America with modest levels of education create significantly more in costs for government than they pay in taxes. 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.” (emphasis added)

According to the report, if the wall stopped half the people entering the U.S. without going through legal entries over the next 10 years, the savings would be almost $64 billion.

The financial calculations don’t account for the original illegal aliens’ children, and the wall wouldn’t stop people here legally from overstaying visas.

One of the caveats and observations CIS issued about the numbers: “A large share of the net fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is at the state and local level, not the federal level. The costs of building the wall will be borne by the federal government.”

Photo credit: By Jonathan McIntosh – Own work, CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons