Today
@cato.org published our report providing the first look at the fiscal effects of the wave of legal & illegal immigration over the last 3 decades. It shows immigrants created surpluses every year, by a combined $14.5 trillion, even as deficits grew
www.cato.org/white-paper/...Our report covers all spending, federal, state, and local, updating the work of the National Academies' 2017 report. You can read my summary:
cato.org/blog/cato-st...
Or the full study:
www.cato.org/white-paper/...https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
How can new people cut the deficit? First, a significant portion of spending is "pure public goods," military & interest payments on old debt, that don't increase b/c of immigrants. This means the average new person is paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits...
And immigrants are better-than-average! Even tho they earn lower wages, they work at so much higher rates that they account for a greater share of total earned income, which results in a higher-than-average share of tax revenues. Immigrants pay more taxes.
On the spending side, immigrants don't cost more than the US-born. Here's everything the government spent money on over the last 30 years. Immigrants were much less costly in two areas: old age benefits and education. Why...?
For old age benefits, it's NOT because they're much less likely to be old. Instead, it's because they don't qualify for benefits, either b/c they are here illegally or don't have the required work history/didn't work for the government to qualify for a public pension.
For education, immigrants arrive in the US at the average age of about 25, meaning that the US gets workers without having to pay to educate them. They are more costly while in school due to bilingual education, but they're much less likely to be in school
What about needs-based assistance? Immigrants are overrepresented in the poverty population, but account for about the average rate for needs-based assistance. Status-based restrictions keep their use rates below the rate predicted by their poverty rate
When you put it all together, this is what the fiscal flows for immigrants have looked like for the last 30 years. Immigrants have reduced the deficit every year for 3 decades.
For decades, nativists have sold America this narrative that immigrant welfare is behind our deficits and debt. This figure shows how absurd that is. This is all government expenditures, federal, state, and local, for the last 3 decades. Immigrants are not to blame:
Feb 3, 2026 16:29In the full report, we evaluate the effects of low-skilled immigrants, noncitizens, illegal immigrants, and children of immigrants.
www.cato.org/white-paper/...
