IMMIGRATIONA 2006 Study Found Undocumented Immigrants Contribute More Than They Cost Texas. The State Hasn’t Updated It Since.
A comptroller’s report found that deporting the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in gross domestic product.
In 2006, Texas State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn set out to assess the impact undocumented Texans have on the state economy and found that they contributed more to Texas than they cost the state.
“This is the first time any state has done a comprehensive financial analysis of the impact of undocumented immigrants on a state’s budget and economy,” Strayhorn, a Republican, wrote at the beginning of the report.
It was also the last time Texas did such a study.
The state has not updated Strayhorn’s analysis or conducted a similar review since it was issued 18 years ago. But a series of reports released by nonprofits and universities have confirmed what Strayhorn’s office found.
Those findings contradict notions that undocumented immigrants strain state resources — a common argument made by some state Republican leaders in interviews and lawsuits challenging the federal government’s immigration policies.
“Texans are hardworking and generous people, but the cost of illegal immigration is an unconscionable burden on the taxpayers of our great state,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in January 2021. “Texas will always welcome those who legally immigrate, but we cannot continue forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for individuals who skirt the law and skip the line.”
The studies also offer hints of the cost that Texans could pay if the incoming Trump administration follows through on its promise to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country.
Strayhorn’s analysis estimated that the absence of 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in gross domestic product, which is a measure of the value of goods and services produced in Texas.
“Blanket mass deportations would be devastating not only for Texas’ economy, but for Texas families,” said Juan Carlos Cerda, Texas state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition, a pro-immigrant group of business leaders. “We’re talking about industries like construction, agriculture, health care, manufacturing that are growing but depend heavily on immigrant labor — and many of these workers have been in the state for decades.”
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office, Texas state leaders have been eager to help him carry out his pledged immigration crackdown. A major pillar of Trump’s first campaign that lifted him to office in 2016 was a promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This time he vowed mass deportations.
