re: #71 Kragar

Path to citizenship will cost $2.7t?

How do they even arrive at that figure for Medicare, Medicaid, SS, food stamps, and unemployment?

Can’t help but be suspicious of the number and want to see their math.

There’s a flip side to legalizing their status in some fashion - that path to citizenship.

At the end, these people will be:
1) paying fees (fines) for the legalization process;
2) paying SS/Medicare/Medicaid/UI taxes;
3) paying federal and state withholding in on the books transactions;
4) the health care costs could potentially be a wash since the nation is already paying for those costs - just not in the same fashion. Burden shifting is at play here and these people would be paying into the system and spreading the costs at the same time.

I’ve yet to see any really good analysis on this front, but the basis for the $2.7t seems to be that the illegal immigrants tend to work in lower skill positions and therefore don’t generate sufficient wages to generate revenues sufficient to offset the greater numbers. Take that deficit on an annual basis - multiply by 10 years, and presto - there’s your figure.