Look how much money illegals milking you for

Chad MacDonald (Photo by Michael Carl)

A new report from Numbers USA, which advocates for limits on immigration into the United States, says each American paid $330 last year to provide government services for illegal aliens.

Numbers USA staffer Chad MacDonald said if an amnesty plan becomes law, allowing illegals coast-to-coast to suddenly establish citizenship, their retirement program will set U.S. taxpayers back an estimated $2.6 trillion.

In an interview with WND, MacDonald addressed a long list of issues, including the costs of illegal immigration.

"Last year, every American on the average paid $330 to provide government services for low-education illegal-immigrant households," he said. "If amnesty legislation would be passed by Congress, like the proposal from 2007, American taxpayers would have to pay $2.6 trillion in retirement costs to those amnestied illegal aliens."

MacDonald and a team of volunteers have been following the Tea Party Express, an organization that has been traveling the country staging rallies to protest the high costs of government and advocate for more individual rights and responsibilities. Flyers by the thousands have been given out, he said.

The message isn't complicated: the more immigrants, the higher taxes go.

He said since 1990, immigrants who have come to the U.S. have swelled the welfare rolls.

"Fifty-three percent of recent immigrants use welfare services and immigrants who have arrived since 1990 and their legally born children account for a 75-percent growth rate in the nation's uninsured population," MacDonald said.

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That has voters worried.

"The issue is about jobs and about fiscal responsibility, and that resonates with the voters," MacDonald said.

He said even in left-leaning regions, such as the Northeast, he's found supporters.

"Today I brought 5,000 flyers and I'm down to about 1,500. I have 50 activists here handing out the flyers and we've gotten a great response from the crowd. The response has been good at every stop along the way as well," MacDonald reported at the Boston tea-party event this week.

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"There's always opposition, but I didn't encounter any opposition in Boston," MacDonald said.

He said Numbers USA is not anti-immigrant.

"Numbers USA is absolutely not anti-immigrant. We're just for lower immigration numbers. We have a very strong no-immigrant-bashing policy on our web site and for our members," MacDonald explained.

"It's about policy for us. It's about reducing the amount of legal and illegal immigration to historical levels when this country had great growth and had low unemployment and that's our policy," he said.

"We are a nation of immigrants and if it is working the way it has historically worked, 250,000 to 300,000 each year, and we've experienced great growth," MacDonald said.

"Last year there were 1.8 million. We had 1.1 million green cards issued last year. That's hard to understand when there are nearly 25 million Americans who are unemployed," MacDonald said.

He said another expense hits taxpayers in the number of illegal aliens who are in prison.

"I can't speak to the situation in every state, but I know that in California, about 30 percent of the inmate population is illegal," MacDonald said.

Advocates for amnesty claim that by passing an amnesty bill, the U.S. could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. But that doesn't align with a research report by the Center for Immigration Studies. The CIS report said claims made by a pro-amnesty think tank about illegal immigrants and a 90-percent tax-payment rate are misleading.

"The report, 'Immigrant Legalization: Assessing the Labor Market Effects,' was published by the foundation-supported Public Policy Institute of California, and was written by Laura E. Hill, Magnus Lofstrom, and Joseph M. Hayes. You will be reading about the 90-percent–or–so tax-payment rate throughout the upcoming legalization debate," CIS reported.

"The trouble is that this finding, though narrowly accurate about the people studied, totally misrepresents the characteristics of America's illegal population generally," the CIS report continued.

The CIS report claims that the California group used an ideal model to back their findings about illegal immigrants.

"If you read the technical appendices to their study carefully, you will find that they draw data from the 2003 New Immigrant Survey. And who was studied in that survey? It was people who, and I am quoting, 'have recently gained legal permanent residence in the United States,'" the CIS report concluded.

Other costs include the losses from crime by illegal aliens, an issue that reached headlines in recent weeks with the shooting death of an Arizona rancher who may have been trying to help an illegal alien crossing his ranch.

States themselves sometimes have resorted to fighting back. Arizona recently adopted a plan that allows law-enforcement officers to check the immigration status of any suspect if the officer has reason to suspect the person's legal status.

Besides its public information campaign, MacDonald said his organization also is seeking support in Congress that could be used to defeat any coming amnesty proposal.

WND reported earlier when one organization suggested using information from the 2010 Census to track down, apprehend and deport illegal aliens.

"We'd like for Congress to pass a special bill demanding that the census data be used," William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, told WND at the time. "The alarm that needs to be raised is that every illegal alien that fills out the census is stealing taxpayer resources and political representation."