Getting rid of immigrants isn’t just a betrayal of America’s fundamental moral principles. Getting rid of immigrants is also self-destructive fiscal policy.
The conservative Cato Institute finds that immigrants—legal and illegal—have been a huge boon to federal, state, and local budgets every year for the last 30 years:
- Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
- Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
- Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
- Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023 (Figure 1).
- Noncitizens accounted for $6.3 trillion of the $14.5 trillion debt savings.
- College graduate immigrants accounted for $11.7 trillion in savings, while non–college graduates accounted for $2.8 trillion.
- The cohort of immigrants entering from 1990 to 1993, just before data collection began in 1994, was fiscally positive $1.7 trillion, and was still positive after 30 years in 2022–2023 (Table 1).
- Even including the second generation (see Box 1 for definitions), who are mostly still children who will become taxpayers soon, the fiscal effect of immigration was positive every year.
- Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) during the 30-year period.
- Without the contributions of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of US GDP—nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis [David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar, “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023,” Cato Institute, 2026.02.03].
Jeepers: if we really want to deport people to reduce the federal deficit, we should start by deporting Donald Trump, who added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in one year.
South Dakota State University in Brookings has begun using a liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer to test surface water and the groundwater that traverses within the food chain according to assistant professor and coordinator of the Campus Core Mass Spectrometry Facility, M. Nurul Islam. Professor Islam could be arrested and deported if the ICE raid scheduled for Brookings targets him because the State Senators and Representatives of Brookings County and the Mayor of Brookings are all Republicans.
Legal immigrants have always been a boon to the economy,
Especially the ones who come here to invest in businesses under the EB-5 program.
What’s your point? We want all the immigrants we can get under the EB-5 program? Of course we do.
The United States has always been the world’s brain drain.
Look what a certain immigrant from South Africa has done for the US economy… his name escapes me for the moment, you know, THAT guy.
Larry, a legal immigrant at SDSU is not going to be deported unless he commits a traffic violation.
As for all the contributions legal immigrants like George Kistiakowsky and Werner Von Braun have historically been responsible for, lumping them in with Somalian grifters like they’re all the same is ridiculous.
The fall of the former Yugoslavia is a modern study in how ethnic and religious tensions can lead to civil war, a takeover by an authoritarian strongman and hegemonic foreign intervention from a global empire, namely the United States. US imperialism created the Somali community in Minnesota as well as the other diasporas in parts of the Midwest.
When he was a US Senator former President Joe Biden argued even before the time of the US invasion of Iraq that the states of Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan should be the eventual outcome for that nation. The Kurds are more secular while the Sunni and Shia tend to be more sectarian. Opponents of partition argue that independent states are more vulnerable to attacks from Iran. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has never controlled land that is contiguous for long enough that might have given it legitimacy in the wider global community.
The incidents of September 11, 2001 in the United States led to human rights abuses, torture and laws like the so-called Patriot Act that allow indefinite detentions without trial making even innocents “unlawful combatants.” Since that time the US has reinforced agreements with France and Algeria that compel cooperation in prosecuting those suspected of acts suspected of being terrorism. Philippines, Belgium, Iraq, Norway, India, Netherlands and Japan have extradition treaties with the United States while Kuwait and Indonesia do not.
And, as China perceives Taiwan as a rebel province Somalia sees Somaliland as a breakaway non-state and China sees Taiwan as a rival in the Horn of Africa. And, until recently, the United States has had little influence in a somewhat stable Somaliland and failed state Somalia is looking more and more like the next Afghanistan.
Today, international law is whatever Donald Trump says it is and most people know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter but in a perfect world acts of terrorism committed by soldiers of fortune in international waters, are within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
America has brought this on itself since radical christianity has murdered millions but you know what scares me?
Donald Trump has escalated his war on civilians and someone from Yemen, Somalia, Syria or even a modern Timothy McVeigh seeking retribution could simply roll a truck bomb into Rapid City Central or Sioux Falls Lincoln High School after an Ellsworth-based drone pilot or some jock from the 114th Fighter Wing targets a wedding party or religious service.
A son of German immgirants can’t help but raise the at Debt becaue he doesn’t understand finance….
https://fortune.com/2026/02/10/government-borrowing-cbo-report-deicit-lending-interest/
Guess his tariff revenues won’t replace the income tax revenue in anybody’s lifetime.