[31] Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Cynthia Bansak, and Steven Raphael, “Gender Differences in the Labor Market: Impact of IRCA’s Amnesty Provisions,” American Economic Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (May 2007), pp. 412–416.
[32] The levels of unemployment and food stamp benefits in 2010 were high because of the recession. The per-household unemployment insurance benefit levels have been adjusted downward by 66 percent in the interim and full amnesty phases to match anticipated non-recessionary benefits.
[33] The analysis assumes that, on average, the benefits would be one-third that amount during the interim period.
[34] Figures include post-recession adjustments.
[35] See Appendix D for details.
[36] All figures are in 2010 dollars and include all post-recession adjustments.
[37] If this figure seems implausibly high, recall that in 2010, the annual fiscal deficit for lawful immigrant households headed by persons without a high school degree (shown in Table 6) was $50,200 and that Obamacare will increase benefits for each low-income household by around $6,300 per household.
[38] The figures include all post-recession adjustments.
[39] The aggregate figures are based on a count of 3.74 million unlawful immigrant households. This figure includes the unlawful immigrant households that appear in the Current Population Survey plus an additional 1.15 million unlawful immigrants that DHS assumes exist but that do not appear in Census records. The unrecorded households are assumed to have the same fiscal characteristics as the unlawful immigrant households appearing in the CPS.
[40] All figures include post-recession adjustments. The estimated costs for Obamacare premium and cost-sharing subsidies are set at 2016 levels.
[41] Individuals would not receive both Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The SSI costs within the average represent individuals who did not fulfill the requirements for Social Security benefits.
[42] This figure includes all post-recession adjustments.
[43] This number could be expected to rise given future medical advances.
[44] Costs would be considerably higher if amnesty recipients could bring parents into the country sooner and if parents on temporary visas were eligible for Obamacare.
[45] The analysis assumes that 5 percent of amnesty recipients would emigrate before retirement. The figures include all post-recession adjustments.
[46] The figures do not include any costs generated by the children of amnesty recipients after age 18.
[47] The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) is a nationally representative sample of 8th graders who were first surveyed in 1988 and followed up in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 2000. The data provide information on students’ educational outcomes as well as their parents’ educational attainment levels. They are the most recent data available on intergenerational educational mobility in the U.S. The data used in the analysis in Table 12 are based on the youths’ educational attainment at age 26. See U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88),” website, http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/nels88/ (accessed May 2, 2013).
[48] This assumes that public policies are unchanged: There is no great increase in tax rates on lower-skill workers, and there is no dramatic cut in government benefits to that group.
[49] The median unlawful immigrant worker earns $24,790 per year. FICA taxes on that salary would come to $3,770. However, if 45 percent of unlawful immigrants work off the books, the average payment per worker would by 55 percent of $3,770, or $2,070.
[50] All figures are in 2013 dollars. The Medicare figure is from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Center for Strategic Planning, “Medicare & Medicaid Research Review, 2011 Statistical Supplement,” Table 3.5, http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/MedicareMedicaidStatSupp/2011.html (accessed April 19, 2013). The Social Security benefit figure was calculated from Social Security Administration, “Benefit Calculators,” http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/benefit6.cgi (accessed April 19, 2013).
[51] An alternative analysis might examine just the Social Security portion of the taxes and benefits. The Social Security portion of FICA taxes is 12.4 percent of wages; 35 years of contributions at the median unlawful immigrant wage would equal $108,000, and 18 years of benefits at $14,652 per year would yield $264,000—more than two dollars of benefits for each dollar paid. The analysis would be slightly different if the tax payments were saved and invested and then paid in retirement, but that will not occur.
[52] It might be argued that, while welfare and medical benefits may increase faster than inflation, the wages of former unlawful immigrants will also increase and the two effects will offset each other. This is highly improbable. Adjusted for inflation, the wages of low-skill workers have fallen over the past 50 years, but government welfare and medical spending per capita has soared. This pattern is unlikely to reverse in the future. (For an additional discussion of wage growth, see Appendix F.)
[53] Even if the extra uncounted immigrants do not currently have families and children in the U.S., they would tend to form families over time, thereby increasing fiscal costs.
[54] Steven A. Camarota, “Amnesty Under Hagel–Martinez: An Estimate of How Many Will Legalize If S. 2611 Becomes Law,” Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, June 2006, p. 3, Table 1.
[55] In 2010, 2 percent of profits, rental, and interest income equaled around $48 billion. Assuming a 40 percent aggregate tax rate on this income, total taxes would equal around $19 billion. Subtracting the worker’s share of corporate profits tax, which is already included in the basic calculations in this paper, would yield around $8.5 billion in indirect tax revenue.
[56] George J. Borjas, “The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 118, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 1335–1374.
[57] National Research Council, The New Americans, p. 151.
[58] See, for example, George J. Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon H. Hanson, “Immigration and the Economic Status of Black Men,” Economica, Vol. 77, No. 306 (April 2010), pp. 255–282; Hannes Johannsson, Stephan Weiler, and Steven Shulman, “Immigration and the Labor Force Participation of Low-Skill Native Workers,” in Solomon W. Polachek, ed., Worker Well-Being and Public Policy (New York: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2003), pp. 291–308; and Christopher L. Smith, “The Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on the Youth Labor Market,” Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 30, No. 1 (January 2012), pp. 55–89.
[59] Judith K. Hellerstein, Melissa McInerney, and David Neumark, “Spatial Mismatch, Immigrant Networks, and Hispanic Employment in the United States,” Annals of Economics and Statistics, No. 99/100 (July/December 2010), pp. 141–167; Fredrik Andersson, Simon Burgess, and Julia Lane, “Do as the Neighbors Do: The Impact of Social Networks on Immigrant Employment,” Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper No. 4423, September 2009, http://ftp.iza.org/dp4423.pdf (accessed April 15, 2013).
[60] If amnesty is enacted and unlawful immigrants have a 5 percent increase in wages as discussed earlier, the result would be an increase in GDP of 0.1 percent with most of the increase going to the former unlawful immigrants themselves.