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Do illegal aliens add to Virginia's coffers?
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How much do illegal aliens cost a state? That sum is unattainable, according to a pair of think tanks. Last week, for instance, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found illegals cost Virginia $1.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. However, immigrationimpact.com claims the numbers “are meaningless” because FAIR does not include sales, excise, income, property, Social Security, and Medicare taxes paid by aliens.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, used in the FAIR analysis, show a per pupil average annual cost of $12,500 in Northern Virginia and $8,750 elsewhere in the commonwealth. In 1994, an Urban Institute study of the fiscal costs of illegal immigration found undocumented aliens are more likely than other students to live in urban areas where per student expenses are relatively high. Northern Virginia has 80 percent of Virginia’s non-English speaking students, according to FAIR.
“Everyone is fiscally ‘costly’ as a child,” author Walter Ewing said in his reply published on immigrationimpact.com. A National Research Council report published in 1997 found, at the state and local level, an individual or a household typically first receives costly services and transfers, particularly for education, and then in a sense pays for them later in life through taxes. “This applies all of us, regardless of whether our families came to the United States on the Mayflower, through Ellis Island, or across the Rio Grande,” Ewing concluded.
Speaking of the Old Dominion, Virginians believe that illegal immigration is harming their state, according to a Zogby poll prepared May 28. Seventy-eight of more than 600 people quizzed commonwealth-wide said immigration had a negative or somewhat negative impact. Fifty-five percent opposed amnesty and 55 percent were somewhat unconfident or not confident at all in Washington’s promise to prevent illegal immigration in the future. All of the results can be found here.
In spite of the Zogby numbers, a threat issued by the Immigration Policy Center warns that nearly 7 percent of Virginians are Latino—and they vote.
In other news, 33 men and three women from Langley Park, MD, were certified by instructors from Prince George’s Community College at CASA de Maryland--Prince George’s Worker’s Center as graduates of a basic construction trades course June 6. Most day laborers in the region are immigrants, and face challenges to achieving self-sufficiency including language barriers, lack of skills training, and extremely low wages, CASA says.
“This graduation is a sign of flexibility and adaptation from a community facing declines in jobs,” said Gustavo Torres, Executive Director of CASA de Maryland, the non-profit that runs five workers’ centers statewide. “It is also foreseeing a boom in the industry once things start going back to normal When things improve, they will be the first in line ready with their new training and qualifications.”
“Providing industry-focused vocational training courses is an example of CASA’s ability to achieve creative solutions in difficult times,” said Marci Hunn, Program Director at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, one of the center’s private funders.
The center serves community members from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and low income African Americans as well.
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