It has already been established beyond the shadow of a doubt that the ongoing Biden border crisis is exacting a significant human toll in terms of crime and stresses on homeless care facilities and charitable organizations. But it’s worth remembering that the massive influx of illegal migrants also brings with them a set of very real financial costs which wind up being passed off to the taxpayers. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has crunched the numbers and calculated that the millions of new illegal aliens who have entered the country just since January of 2021 will place a more than twenty billion dollar burden on the system each year for the next ten years. There are any number of more admirable uses that this amount of money could be put to, but one stands out as an obvious choice. We could finish construction on the entire southern border wall next year for less money than the migrants will wind up costing us. Of course, you obviously won’t hear any of this during the next White House press briefing. (Fox News)

The number of illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. since President Biden took office will cost the U.S. taxpayer over $20 billion each year, according to a new analysis by a hawkish immigration group.

The study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which advocates for lower levels of immigration overall, calculates that the illegal immigrants who have entered the U.S. since Jan. 2021 will add an extra $20.4 billion burden a year, in addition to the $140 billion existing illegal immigrants already cost.

The analysis is based on an estimated 1.3 million released into the U.S. by immigration officials, as well as approximately one million “gotaways” — or illegal immigrants who have slipped past overwhelmed agents. FAIR calculates that each illegal immigrants costs $9,232 a year to support.

We can’t pin down a precise number of illegal immigrants entering the country because of the massive number of “gotaways” that slip through. They total nearly as many as the number who are turned loose under the Biden administration’s catch and release program. But CBP seems fairly confident in these numbers.

It’s a bit more difficult to pin down an exact dollar figure in terms of what each illegal alien costs in terms of public resources and jobs denied to citizens and legal immigrants. But a 2006 House study focusing on the impact of illegal immigration into California suggests that the $9, 232.00 figure quoted above might even be on the low side.

So what else could be done with all of that money? The obvious choice has already been mentioned. The wall could be finished across the entire southern border for a little more than $16 billion. Once that is done, it will become vastly more difficult for anyone to come across except at legal crossing points. Border security forces and resources could be focused on the most problematic areas instead of being spread out so thinly as they are now. When the total number of illegal aliens coming into the country is slashed dramatically, the total cost to the taxpayers will go down as well.

But even if you still oppose the idea of finishing the wall for some reason, consider the other uses the money could be put to. As the analysis from FAIR notes, twenty billion dollars may sound trivial compared to the trillions of dollars we currently spend on everything else, but it would still go a long way. Possibilities include:

• Giving every homeless veteran in the U.S. $50K a year for the next 10 years.
• Hire 330,000 teachers
• Provide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to more than 7 million extra families
• Provide every family earning less than $50K a year a $410 grocery voucher.

That puts the monetary figures we’re talking about into perspective, doesn’t it? But those are all limited benefits with expiration dates. The wall would essentially be a one-time investment aside from the routine maintenance that would be required every year. And once completed, it could potentially free up all of the money that would have been drained by the army of illegal migrants and those funds could still be put to the other uses I listed anyway.

Honestly, why are we still having this debate? No matter your ideological stance on migration issues, this is just simple math we’re talking about. Joe Biden needs to swallow his pride, admit that he is the root cause of the worst immigration crisis the country has ever experienced, and just finish the wall once and for all.