[lbo-talk] Dean Baker on immigration

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Apr 17 10:27:09 PDT 2006


Marta Russell wrote:


>The moral ground I see is that so many who come here wind up getting
>on government benefits.

Actually they don't. Immigrants are young, and use few government services. They pay taxes - including Social Security taxes, often into phony accounts that are very unlikely ever to draw benefits. Their use of Medicaid is surprisingly small - a few hundred million dollars a year, according to CBO estimates. On balance, they contribute more to the fisc than they take.

Doug



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