The Real Expense of Illegal Immigration Research Proposal

The Real Expense of Illegal Immigration - Research Proposal Example It has been estimated that the added cost to the federal government will be more than $15 billion per year when the present illegal aliens become citizens and begin collecting welfare benefits. The proposed bill will add greatly to this number because it will encourage a new surge of low skilled workers through its guest worker program. Traditionally, immigrants to the U.S. were less likely than those born in America to collect welfare. This historic arrangement has radically changed over the past three decades. Today, immigrant families are at least 50 percent more likely to receive federal benefits than those born in this country. Additionally, immigrants are more likely to adapt their lives to rely on the welfare system and studies have shown the longer immi ¬grants stay in the U.S., the more likely they are to be on welfare. To further aggravate the situation, when an illegal immigrant becomes a citizen, he can legally bring his parents who also have the right to become citi ¬zens. The estimated long-term cost of overall federal benefits could exceed $50 billion per year for the parents of the 10 million beneficiaries of amnesty. â€Å"In the long run, the bill, if enacted, would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years† (Rector, 2006). Approximately half of current illegal immigrants do not possess a high-school level education. Welfare use among this group and for low-skill immigrants granted amnesty is three times the rate for the U.S. born citizens.