4um: Pew Study Shows Illegal Aliens Uneducated and a Burden to America's Health Care System

Title: Pew Study Shows Illegal Aliens Uneducated and a Burden to America's Health Care System
Source: FAIR
URL Source: http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?pa ... urity=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721#4
Published: Apr 20, 2009
Author: FAIR/Pew
Post Date: 2009-04-21 20:38:14 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 54
Comments: 3

Last week, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report entitled “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants” in the United States providing some of the most recent and detailed statistics available about illegal aliens living in the United States. These statistics reveal that at a time when America can least afford additional financial and economic burdens, illegal aliens are straining taxpayers in regards to health care, education, and other social services.

The Pew Hispanic study reveals that illegal immigration is placing a strain on America’s education system. Children of illegal aliens now represent 6.8% of the total population of students enrolled in Kindergarten through 12th Grade, up from 5.4% in 2003. In five states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas—10% of K through 12 students have parents who are illegal aliens. (Id. at 9).

Pew’s data also reveals that illegal aliens are far less educated than the U.S. population as a whole. Pew states that illegal alien adults between the ages of 25 and 64 are disproportionately uneducated and unskilled when compared to U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. Nearly 29% of illegal aliens in the United States possess “less than a ninth-grade education; an additional 18% have some high school education but have not completed high school.” This compares to 2% and 6% of U.S. citizens in that age range who, respectively, have not reached the ninth-grade level or the equivalent of a high school degree. (Id. at 10). Younger illegal aliens (ages 18 to 24) do not fare much better: 40% of illegal aliens in that age group have not completed high school, compared to 15% of legal immigrants and 8% of U.S. citizens in the same age group (Id. at 11-12).

Pew Hispanic states that the fact that illegal aliens tend to be unskilled and uneducated reveals why illegal alien adults are also disproportionately represented among the poor. Pew found that 21% of illegal aliens inside the United States are considered “poor” (compared to 13% of legal immigrant adults and 10% of U.S. citizen adults). Additionally, illegal alien adults and their U.S.-born children account for 11% of the total U.S. population living below the poverty level, “twice their representation in the total population.” (Id. at 17).

The Pew report contained figures concerning the impact of illegal aliens on the American health care system as well. Pew reports that 59% of illegal aliens, 45% of illegal alien children, and 25% of U.S.-born children of illegal aliens lacked health insurance in 2007. This last figure stands in stark contrast to the 8% of children of U.S. citizen parents who were uninsured in 2007. (Id. at 18).

Illegal Immigration Costs Texans $4.7 Billion a Year Finds New Study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

WASHINGTON, April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Mass illegal immigration is costing Texas more than $4.65 billion a year finds a new report released today by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Texans, examines the fiscal costs being borne by the state to provide education, health care and incarceration for an illegal alien population now estimated to exceed 1.5 million.

Using a 1994 study published by the Urban Institute as a baseline, The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Texans looks at Census Bureau and other data to estimate the explosive growth in the size and cost of illegal immigration in the nation's second most populous state. In 2004, the annual fiscal burden of illegal immigration amounted to about $725 per Texas household headed by a native-born resident.

Among the report's key findings: * Texas spends more than $4 billion a year to provide K-12 education for the children of illegal aliens.

* These children account for nearly 12 percent of the total K-12 school population.

* Taxpayer-funded medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population amount to about $520 million a year.

* The uncompensated cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in Texas's state and county prisons amounts to at least $150 million a year.

The costs of other programs and services provided to illegal aliens, and the impact of mass illegal immigration on the jobs and wages of Texans who have been forced to compete against illegal immigrants are not included in FAIR's study, and would probably result in still higher costs to the state and its residents.

"In Texas, as in many other states, the phenomenon of mass illegal immigration is draining public coffers and robbing local residents of access to essential public services," observed Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "While every state and almost every community around the country is struggling to improve education and rein-in health care costs, our nation's failure to address rampant illegal immigration is compounding the problems that state and local governments face.

"All across the country, people are waking up to the reality that illegal immigration has become an enormously expensive phenomenon paid for by workers, taxpayers and schoolchildren," Stein continued. "If anyone would ask Texans if they want to subsidize more than a million illegal aliens to the tune of $4.65 billion a year, or see their public schools, hospitals and prisons overcrowded with illegal immigrants, the answer would be a resounding 'no.' Yet federal and state policies have failed to protect Texans from that burden and have forced them and other Americans to subsidize mass illegal immigration."