Illegal immigration in the United States surged to a record 14 million in 2023, according to a Pew Research Center report. That figure marked a sharp increase from 11.8 million in 2022 and broke the previous high of 12.2 million set in 2007. Numbers rose further in 2024 under Biden’s policies, then began to decline in 2025 under Trump, though the total remains above 14 million.
California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois had the largest concentrations of illegal immigrants, with Texas rapidly catching up to California. Pew estimated that 9.7 million were part of the U.S. workforce in 2023, about 5.6% of all workers, with Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas recording the highest shares.
The economic impact of illegal immigration is staggering. According to a 2023 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the gross annual cost of illegal immigration, the total before factoring in taxes paid by illegal aliens, has risen to $182 billion.
Taxes paid by illegal immigrants cover only about 17.2 percent of these costs, leaving American taxpayers with a net burden of $150.7 billion per year. That amounts to $8,776 annually for each illegal immigrant or U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants. On a per-taxpayer basis, illegal immigration costs $1,156 a year, or $957 after accounting for taxes paid by illegal aliens.
These costs have grown sharply. The 2022 totals represented a 30 percent increase over just five years. A previous FAIR study in 2017 estimated the net annual cost at $116 billion, underscoring how quickly the burden has escalated.
The local impact of illegal immigration is especially visible in law enforcement statistics. In Los Angeles County, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide are for illegal aliens, and as many as two-thirds of all fugitive warrants in the county involve illegal aliens.
A Justice Department–funded study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies in 2008 found that between 25 and 50 percent of gang members arrested in northern and western Virginia were removable aliens, most of them in the country illegally.
Criminal justice costs alone amount to $47 billion annually, not including damages suffered by victims. Healthcare adds further strain. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported that “emergency services for undocumented aliens” cost $7 billion in fiscal 2021 and $5.4 billion in 2022. In addition, migrants received at least $8 billion in improper Medicaid payouts.
Beyond the direct fiscal burden, illegal immigration also imposes significant indirect costs on American workers through wage suppression. Academic research led by Harvard economist George Borjas has consistently shown that immigration’s largest negative impact falls on native workers without a high school diploma, a group that makes up a modest but shrinking share of the workforce and includes some of the poorest Americans.
Borjas’ findings suggest that roughly one-third of the 10-percentage-point decline in the relative wage of high school dropouts between 1980 and 1988 can be attributed to the influx of less-skilled immigrants. His broader research indicates that, when averaging wage effects across education levels, the wages of preexisting workers fell by about 3.2 percent in the short run, though effects faded over the long term.
In practical terms, this means that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, disproportionately depresses the wages of low-skilled American workers who are already among the most economically vulnerable.
Educational costs and crime-related expenses are yet another burden shouldered by U.S. taxpayers. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that during the 2021–2022 school year, 5.1 million public school students, about 6.5 percent of the total, were children of migrants. This influx strains already underfunded school systems, forcing districts to absorb additional costs for instruction, language services, and classroom resources.
The criminal justice system faces its own heavy costs from illegal immigration. U.S. Border Patrol data show consistent arrests of “criminal aliens,” defined as individuals convicted of one or more crimes either in the United States or abroad before interdiction. Over the last decade, approximately 816,000 criminal aliens have been deported from the United States.
The Center for Immigration Studies notes that this figure understates the true burden, since prosecutors sometimes drop charges against non-citizens once ICE signals that deportation is imminent, removing the case from their docket but leaving the underlying crime unpunished.
Liberals often claim that illegal immigrants are good for the nation, or ask, “What harm do they cause?” The answer is clear: they create massive educational and criminal justice costs while suppressing wages. Illegal immigration imposes far-reaching obligations on taxpayers, extending well beyond direct fiscal transfers, government benefits, healthcare, and other forms of support provided by the government.
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