What do illegal immigrants cost taxpayers? Do they impose a cost at all? Do they, in fact, pay more taxes than they receive in services? These are all questions raised in the debate over the bill granting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. According to a new study, immigrants pay a significant amount in taxes. But is this study the end of the debate?

Probably not, as the comments below the Sun’s online story on the study indicate. Those who oppose illegal immigrants either don’t believe the number or don’t care about it. Of course, those who are on the other side of the debate are equally as dismissive of studies from anti-immigration groups that claim illegal immigrants cost taxpayers billions. This is an example of confirmation bias in action – ignoring anything that contradicts your pre-conceived notions.

The actual issue of whether illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than the government services they receive is one that is difficult to determine. Being illegal, these immigrants often exist in something of a shadow economy. While they are required to pay income taxes on their earnings (as Kevin Waterman has pointed out repeatedly at his blog), they probably work “off the books” more than legal workers.

Illegal immigrants pay the same taxes that anyone else in their income group pays -- income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes (either directly, if they own their property, or indirectly through their rent), sales taxes, excise taxes (like liquor taxes and cable franchise fees), etc. It is likely that since many illegal immigrants work in low-wage industries, they aren’t paying much in terms of payroll or income taxes. Of course, that can be said for anyone else who works in low-wage industries, whether citizens or not.

In terms of government services, illegal immigrants certainly receive some. They use roads, they benefit from police protection, they use the judicial system, etc. They are ineligible to receive other government benefits, however, like food stamps, Medicaid (except for emergency medical services), housing vouchers, etc. One main exception to this is that illegal immigrant children cannot be denied an education.

Anti-immigrant groups like to fudge the issue by saying that households headed by illegal immigrants receive a lot of government help. If an illegal immigrant has a child here, that child is a citizen (and the Constitution is clear that if you are born in the U.S., you are a citizen). That citizen child can then get Medicaid and WIC. But the government programs are for the citizen child, not for the illegal immigrant parent, even though illegal immigrants may receive ancillary benefits from their children’s government programs (a block of cheese purchased with a WIC voucher can feed an adult just as well as it can feed a child, for instance).

Because of the very limited ways illegal immigrants can take advantage of government assistance programs, and the fact that illegal immigrants’ participation in the workforce is higher than for natives, it’s almost certain that if you take a citizen and an illegal immigrant family of similar size and income, the citizen family is getting far more money from the government than the illegal immigrant family.

There have been a number of studies done to figure out how much immigrants pay in taxes and how much they receive in benefits. As a Congressional Budget Office report that looked at all these studies concluded that illegal immigrants consumed more benefits than they paid in taxes, but that the effect on states’ budgets was “modest.”

Just looking at the direct taxes paid versus the services consumed isn’t the whole picture. Immigrants, including illegal immigrants, increase economic growth. There is a popular idea that immigrants “take” jobs and that they are a drag on our economy. This is clearly false, though. Immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are a boost to a state’s economy. Restrictions on immigration hurt the economy. It’s hard to say how much illegal immigrants’ economic boost increases tax revenue or if it offsets the services they use, but it needs to be considered in this equation.

The debate over illegal immigration is very contentious, but there are some facts out there to inform it. We’d all be better off if the debate was fueled by these facts rather than the anecdotes and sob stories that proliferate on both the pro-immigration and anti-immigration sides.