Amnesty Cost Would Top $60 Billion A Year

If an illegal alien amnesty and guest worker program similar to the one being contemplated by the United States Senate and supported by President Bush were enacted, the cost burden to state and local governments would be staggering, projects an analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR estimates that state and local costs associated with illegal immigration for public education, health care and incarceration, now about $36 billion a year, would balloon to $61.5 billion by 2010 a 70 percent increase and increase to $106.3 billion by 2020. “From every possible angle, an illegal alien amnesty and guest worker program would be a fiscal and administrative nightmare,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “Never mind the fact that an illegal alien amnesty is a moral betrayal of the American public and immigrants who played by the rules. It would be an unfunded federal mandate that will bankrupt states, counties and cities all across the United States.”

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