“A person may work, but also create very significant costs for
the welfare system. However, those costs are diffuse, borne by all taxpayers,
while employers get the workers they want and the immigrants improve their
lives by coming to the United States,” the report reads. “Focusing only
on the desire of employers to bring in additional workers or the desire of
immigrants to come to America misses the potentially enormous impact immigrant
workers can have on American taxpayers.”
“When
welfare is taken into consideration, allowing immigrant workers into the
country to perform low-wage jobs is clearly problematic,” it continues. “It
would, at least from the point of view of avoiding welfare expenditures, make
more sense to hire from the enormous pool of less-educated natives not working
rather than adding less-educated individuals through our immigration system.”
Beyond the fiscal costs, Camarota noted immigrants’ high welfare
use likely has political implications as well as recent surveys have shown immigrants tend to prefer big
government policies.
“If your goal is to curtail the welfare state
adding more voters who use it certainly makes [growing] it more likely,” he
added.
