A new Cato Institute analysis shows immigrants consistently paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from 1994 to 2023
A groundbreaking new report released Tuesday details how immigrants in the United States over the last three decades have contributed a massive surplus to the nation’s economy, resulting in a total of more than $14 trillion over that period due to the fact that immigrant families generate significantly more benefits to fiscal health than they take away in the form of benefits received or downside costs.
The white paper by the libertarian free-marketeers at the Cato Institute, not a left-leaning outfit, builds on an existing model developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create a first-of-its-kind analyzes to determine “how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets” in a cumulative manner.
Looking at 30 years of data, the 95-page report—titled “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023”—discovered that immigrants overall “generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion” over those years. In part, the NASEM-Cato model shows:
-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.
The paper concludes that “the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American, and that immigrants impose lower costs per person on old-age benefit, education, and public safety programs.”
The findings arrive with the US embroiled in a heated debate about immigration enforcement as President Donald Trump—backed by far-right xenophobes in his inner orbit, including White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem—has unleashed violent federal agents into communities nationwide to sweep up undocumented workers and their family members.
In a video produced for social media, David J. Bier, director of Immigration Studies at Cato and one of the report’s co-authors, said the analysis shows in detail why it’s a lie to believe that immigrants are “sucking us dry,” a familiar argument by anti-immigrant “nativists” like Miller.
