A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that it costs more to fund illegal births in America every year than the annual funding for President Donald Trump’s vaunted Wall.
The CIS document reveals that female illegal immigrants in the U.S. had 297,000 children in 2014 — costing $2.4 billion. As the Washington Examiner notes, Congress has approved $1.6 billion in 2018 to build The Wall. Although that’s not enough to finish the project, the political fight to obtain greater funding has been shelved until after the midterm elections — and could result in gridlock between the executive and legislative branches of the government.
Although illegal immigrants are not supposed to be receiving state welfare, that rarely happens in practice. The report asserts, “Medicaid will pay for a delivery in almost all cases if the mother is uninsured or has a low income, though some mothers without insurance may not even realize the program has paid health care providers. Illegal immigrants and most new legal immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid, but the program will still cover the cost of delivery and post-partum care for these mothers for at least a few months.”
The CIS examined births to both legal and illegal immigrants and concluded that these groups now account for 20 percent of births in America.
“Our best estimate is that legal immigrants accounted for 12.4 percent — 494,000 — of all births, and illegal immigrants accounted for 7.5 percent, — 297000,” wrote CIS Research Director Steven A. Camarota.
Camarota noted little difference in the figures in subsequent years.
As the Washington Examiner notes, Camarota says, “Paying for so many births to immigrant mothers may make sense, but the large share who can’t provide for themselves without the help of American taxpayers raises the question of whether our current immigration system makes sense.”