Report: Taxpayers Billed up to $133,000 per Refugee Resettled in U.S.

by Catherine Smith

Breitbart reports, “American taxpayers are billed up to $133,000 per refugee resettled in the United States over the course of a lifetime, a new study reveals.”

In a recent report on the costs to U.S. citizens for its welcoming immigration and refugee policies, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that each refugee resettled in the U.S. especially those in the United States illegally, and use social welfare programs cost American taxpayers anywhere on average between $60,000 and $133,000 over the course of a lifetime.

“No plausible model, not even the National Academies’ best-case scenario, comes close to suggesting that refugees who enter as adults will be net fiscal contributors,” CIS researchers note. “Refugee-specific costs add about 22 percent over and above the cost of other immigrants, but low education by itself is enough to push adult refugees’ estimated fiscal impact well into negative territory.”

The report suggests “it may be possible to help a greater number of displaced people overseas rather than paying to settle them” in the U.S.

“Overseas assistance could allow some refugees to eventually resettle in countries where they have stronger cultural or historical ties than they do with the United States,” the CIS researchers write.

For Fiscal Year 2020, Trump will continue cutting refugee admissions by reducing former President Barack Obama’s refugee inflow by at least 80 percent. This reduction would mean a maximum of 18,000 refugees can be resettled in the U.S. between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020. This is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.”

Trump’s State Department is set to admit less than 30,000 refugees this fiscal year, reducing the burden that the refugee resettlement program has placed on America’s working and middle class, as well as on small U.S. communities. Trump sought to allow communities to have a say in if or how many refugees they resettle. A federal judge, though, has temporarily blocked that executive order from taking effect.

The federally mandated refugee resettlement program has brought more than 977,000 refugees to the U.S. between 2002 and 2019 — a population nearly double the size of Wyoming, where 577,000 residents live. In that period, about 109,000 refugees have been resettled in California, 85,000 resettled in Texas, nearly 59,000 resettled in New York, and more than 48,000 resettled in Florida.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years.

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Catherine Smith is a contributor to American Greatness.