Free «Immigration» Essay

The state of Texas, which borders Mexico, has particularly suffered from the costs of immigration. During the last few decades, there was an extreme growth in immigration. Talking about illegal immigrants, there is one serious question that concerns the local citizens and government. They want to evaluate whether this immigration harm of help the state. This paper discusses the extent of foreign immigration in Texas and all pros and cons of such process.

The immigrant population in Texas has been increasing since the 1970s. At that time, the number of foreign citizens was only 310,000 people. Twenty years later, that amount had risen to 1.5 million humans. Since that time, the immigration rate has significantly exploded. According to the American Census Bureau estimate in 2004, there were 3.45 million of foreign residents of Texas. Thus, that is 1,100% comparing with 3% in 1970. In 1990, this number was 8%; in 2004, there were 15.7% immigrants of all Texans (Bernsen, n.d.). Although there was the widespread migration in Texas within the USA, this wave of foreign immigration comes with more intensive social and financial outcomes.

The majority of such increasing number of foreigners in Texas goes from legal immigrants. However, a large part, which is proportionately enlarging, comes from illegal newcomers. Due to the Census Bureau, nowadays Texas is a home to 15% of all illegal foreign migrants in the USA. Since 1993, the population in this state has doubled while some studies evaluated that the number even increased in three times (Bernsen, n.d.).

Regarding an increasing number of immigrants in Texas, the most controversial issue in the immigration debate is searching whether they create a loss or profit for local, state, and federal coffers. To solve this problem, it is necessary to know how many illegal migrants contribute to the state by income, sales, and other taxes. Also, it is needed to count their costs to Texas using such public services as health care, education, and law enforcement.

Many government agencies, academic institutions, analytical centers, and advocacy groups published their reports on the fiscal impact of foreign immigration on both local and state budgets. As they use different methodologies, the results of their findings make it quite complicated to conclude a single inference. For instance, a report by the Texas Office of the Comptroller in 2006 presented that about 1.4 million illegal immigrants contributed more to state income than those people cost in state services during 2005. As a result, the net profit for Texas was $424.7 million. However, the same study showed the opposite side of local governments and hospitals that estimated the net loss of $928.9 million in 2005 due to illegal immigrants (Evans, 2008).

According to the report that is titled The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments, there are four conclusions. Firstly, local and state governments have spending for providing services to illegal immigrants. They also have limited possibilities for minimizing those costs.

Secondly, the amounts that governments spend on resources for those people present a small percentage of the total costs of ensuring these services to citizens in their jurisdiction.

Thirdly, the taxation does not compensate the total spending of services provided to unauthorized immigrants. The last conclusion is that federal aid programs offer resources to governments that ensure services to illegal immigrants, but these funds do not cover the costs made by the parties (Evans, 2008).

A senior researcher, Randy Capps, admitted that the net financial impact of illegal migrants depended on measuring taxes and service costs. He also added that the money those immigrants spend on goods, as well as services in local communities or the state, “reverberates throughout the whole economy, creates more jobs, more spending, and more revenue. The scale of economic benefit far outweighs any costs on the fiscal side” (Evans, 2008, para. 13).

In conclusion, the extremely increasing number of immigrants in Texas brings a complicated issue about their harms or helps to the state. There are various reports from different agencies and institutions about this question with controversial conclusions. Nevertheless, the net fiscal impact of illegal immigration depends on taxes and services provided to those people.