To Deport or Not to Deport: The Pros and Cons
Is deportation the best answer?
Children of Immigrants Suffer, Too – Part 2
To date, our broken immigration system calls for the deportation of approximately 11 million illegal immigrants. There are currently two ways of removing illegal immigrants from the United States.
One way is to make living conditions in the US so unbearable for them that they would eventually have to return to their country of origin.
The other is to directly deport them.
But how much would deporting these immigrants cost? According to the Center for American Progress, it would cost $200 billion to deport all the illegal immigrants currently in the US and an additional $85 billion to enforce this policy for the next five years. In total, the cost of deporting illegal immigrants back to their countries would cost the United States tax payers $285 billion. This will mean that every single person in the US will have to pay an additional $922 in taxes every year.
But will this strategy be beneficial in the long run? It is estimated that, on top of the $285 billion, the deportation of illegal immigrants from the US will result in a $2.5 trillion loss in Gross Domestic Product over the course of the next ten years. Allowing the illegal immigrants to stay in the US, however, will result in a $1.5 trillion growth in Gross Domestic Product over the next ten years.
So what are the cons of deporting illegal immigrants? An outrageous increase in taxes and a severe Gross Domestic Product loss. What are the pros of deporting illegal immigrants? There are none. This brings us back to the question: “To deport or not to deport?”, and the answer is obvious. We at Beach-Oswald Immigration Law Associates make it our mission to help those deserving immigrants become part of the American fabric and citizenship.
To read the full Center for American Progress report, please go to http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/pdf/cost_of_deportation.pdf