The True Cost of The Wall

President Trump's wall will cost $18 billion. Sounds like a lot, huh? Nope. How much does America spend now on illegal aliens? $135 billion a year. Let me repeat, $135 billion a year or $1.35 trillion each decade.

We already have built nearly 700 miles of wall on our 1,900 mile southern border. Much of it is inadequate and in disrepair. Did you know that a two-story corrugated metal fence in El Paso, Texas, first erected under the Bush administration, has already curtailed illegal border crossings there by more than 89 percent? Without a wall, the Homeland Security Department forecasts an additional 2 million illegals will come across the US-Mexico border over the next decade. If a new wall stopped just half of those expected crossings, it would save American taxpayers a whopping $64 billion, almost four times the wall’s cost.

Illegal border crossers are overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and lack English language and other skills. That means if they work, they tend to make low wages; and as a result pay relatively little in taxes while using public services. And if they have children while in the US, they receive welfare benefits for those children. Therefore, illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden to the US of more than $94,000 during their lifetimes.

While the national media routinely report that illegal aliens don’t go on welfare, that's a lie. While in most cases they can’t legally qualify for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid or other public benefits, the reality is that the vast majority of households headed by illegal immigrants are on welfare through their children.

The US Census Bureau’s latest “survey of income and program participation” shows that 62 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households are on the federal dole — more than double the rate for households headed by native-born Americans. Illegals are heavy users of food stamps and Medicaid. Some collect federal benefits through fraud or administrative errors or through green-card holders. In the case of Medicaid, pregnant women illegally in the country are also enrolled in the program. There is also an Emergency Medicaid program that covers predominantly illegal aliens. Funds from the multibillion-dollar program go to hospitals to offset the cost of treating adult illegal aliens who can’t pay their bills. And it’s not just for ER visits. In New York, the program can be used to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy for illegal aliens. In addition, the IRS each year pays out billions to illegal aliens in refundable child tax credits and the earned income tax credit.

While Democrats complain the $18 billion price tag for the Trump wall is too high, the cost of the DREAM Act has been estimated at $26 billion in the first ten years. The CBO recently estimated that 3 million DREAM Act recipients would cost $12 billion-plus in ObamaCare subsidies, more than $5.5 billion in Medicaid benefits, $5.5 billion in earned-income and child-tax credits and more than $2 billion in food stamps.