Forbes
By Emily Canal
February 23, 2016
When it comes to immigration, it now looks like Sen. Ted Cruz is on the same page as GOP front-runner Donald Trump.
Cruz
(R-Texas) said Monday that if he is elected president, he would deport
millions of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United
States. But experts say
that move would cost the American government $114 billion, and that the
economic toll of uprooting and expelling that many people could be far
greater.
Cruz’s
comments in an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday
represent a dramatic shift from what he’s said previously in his
campaign for president. As
recently as January, Cruz told CNN that he would not “send jackboots”
to round up every undocumented immigrant.
Cruz
also said he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, triple
the border patrol and implement biometric entry systems to keep track of
foreigners. Aspects
of that plan resemble measures proposed last year by GOP front runner
Donald Trump, which have been dismissed as prohibitively expensive.
In
2014, the Pew Research Center said there were 11.3 million undocumented
immigrants living in the U.S. It would cost an average of $10,070 per
person to physically remove
every undocumented alien from the U.S., according to an August 2015
report by the Center for American Progress.
Philip
E. Wolgin, the author of the report, wrote that it would cost the
Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice a total of
$114 billion to deport
the undocumented people already living in the U.S. This includes
finding individuals, detaining them while they wait for removal,
processing them through immigration courts and transporting them abroad.
“It’s
not just the economic costs and craziness it would be to round up 11.3
million people, but the real effect it would have on U.S.-born children
and citizens of relatives,”
Wolgin, the managing director of immigration for the Center of American
Progress, told FORBES. “And that’s a really major factor that we can’t
disregard.”
As
daunting a figure as $114 billion may be, the economic impact of losing
11.3 million people would be far greater. The American Action Forum, a
center-right policy institute,
said that removing all undocumented immigrants would deplete the U.S.
labor force by 6.4% and shrink the U.S. economy by $1.6 trillion over 20
years.
Creating
a pathway to citizenship, on the other hand, would create 145,000 new
jobs annually, and increase the cumulative income of all Americans by
$625 billion over
10 years, according to CAP .
The
additional measures Cruz said he’d take on immigration would only add
to the cost. A wall on the U.S.-Mexico border as imagined by GOP front
runner Donald Trump, for
example, would cost $8 billion, the candidate has told CNN. Tripling
the amount of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would cost
$8.4 billion, according to Politico.
In
2013 the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research
institution, said the first-year cost for implementing a biometric
screening system would range from
$400 million to $600 million. But that same year, a $7 billion
computerized biometric screening program was proposed as part of a $46
billion border security bill put before Congress. At the time, DHS
officials were critical of the technology, arguing that
it would do little to halt unauthorized immigration, according to The
L.A. Times.
The Cruz campaign did not return request for comment on how the measures would be paid for.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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