(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
As the November election approaches, Americans are paying increasing attention to the Biden-Harris administration's open borders policies and the costs of those policies to our country. Historically, it was border states where the impact of illegal immigration was most keenly felt.
Not anymore. Today, the crises are everywhere.
Springfield, Ohio — population 58,000 — has been forced to absorb 20,000 Haitians in just a few years since President Joe Biden and Vice President (and "border czar") Kamala Harris decided to give Haitians "temporary protected status." Springfield Mayor Rob Rue says the city is "saturated" and has been unable to plan for or accommodate the influx of so many immigrants.
Government services are stretched to the breaking point, there is a housing shortage, 2,000 of Springfield's 7,000 public school students do not speak English, and the school district does not have English as a Second Language programs, leaving teachers unprepared and overwhelmed. Private organizations are also challenged; Springfield's hospitals are spending up to $50,000 a month on translation services for Haitian patients.
But the expenses of Springfield, Ohio, are dwarfed by those of our larger cities and more populated states.
Chicago, for example, has spent $400 million on illegal immigrants over the past two years; most of that money, according to reports, is going to private companies getting big bucks to provide migrant housing. Chicago's residents are, unsurprisingly, outraged at the diversion of such huge amounts away from the needs of the city's native-born poor, homeless, veterans, and those dealing with mental health crises.
Last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams estimated that the costs of illegal immigration in that city were approaching $4 billion a year, more than half of the $7.4 billion experts project illegal immigration will cost the Empire State annually.
The annual costs of legal immigration for the state of California are the highest in the country: almost $23 billion (more than $30 billion if the benefits to the children of illegal immigrants are taken into account). And those amounts are guaranteed to grow.
Illegal immigrants already comprise 8% of the state's total population. And California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving illegal immigrants free healthcare, paid for by California's taxpayers.
That is estimated to cost an additional $3 billion to $6 billion a year, at a time when the state budget is already facing a deficit of nearly $70 billion.
It isn't just those three states taking huge hits; the costs of illegal immigration now exceed $1 billion annually in 16 of the 50 states.
State and local officials have been desperately asking for federal assistance. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reports that in fiscal year 2023, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) handed out more than $780 million to states and cities for emergency food and shelter programs.
But that's a drop in the bucket.
CIS states: "(T)hese costs do not include the costs the federal government pays to process inadmissible migrants through the immigration system ... (including) transportation; shelter, detention, or administrating the expensive and generally ineffective "alternatives to detention" program; food; medical care; education programs for arriving children; translators; increased hiring, training, and salaries for asylum officers to conduct credible fear screenings; and the separately expensive immigration court system under the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which includes operating costs and salaries needed for immigration judges, DHS attorneys, and administrative staff for lengthy and complicated proceedings."
Nor does that nearly $800 million from DHS include "taxpayer-funded public benefits migrants will become eligible for as a result of being unlawfully paroled into the country by the Biden administration; the public benefits costs that any children they may have in the United States are automatically eligible for regardless of the manner of entry of their parents; the costs that states incur to provide services to this population; and the increased housing costs in areas where large numbers of migrants have settled."
All that "federal assistance" and those "benefits" are paid for by us — American taxpayers.
All told, the costs of illegal immigration to the American public are estimated to be $150 billion a year. Every year. Year after year after year.
Imagine what could be done with those funds: housing for our homeless; real treatment facilities for our mentally ill and those dealing with addiction and substance abuse; proper medical care and adequate housing for our veterans; improved schools for our children.
It also bears mentioning that these are the costs of illegal immigration that can be calculated. It is impossible to calculate the losses associated with the tens of thousands of Americans who lose their lives every year to poisoning by fentanyl that comes illegally across our open border.
Or the immeasurable losses of individuals like Dominic Durden, Shayley Estes, Sarah Root, Tessa Tranchant, Ronald da Silva, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, Mollie Tibbetts, Alex Wise, Kate Steinle, Sonia and Daniel Guzman, Laken Riley, Shannon Jungwirth and Jorge Reyes-Jungwirth, Melissa and Riordan Powell, Aidan Clark, and so many others, killed by individuals who were in this country illegally, many of whom had already been deported multiple times.
The election is Nov. 5. Early voting begins this week.
Americans must decide if they want to continue the policies of an administration that treats Americans as expendable while throwing hundreds of billions of dollars of our hard-earned money at migrants, or whether they want a president and administration that values American lives and uses American taxes to improve them.
Laura Hollis is an attorney and university professor who has taught courses in law and business for more than 30 years. Her legal publications have appeared in the Temple Law Review, Cardozo Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. She is a nationally syndicated columnist whose work has been featured in dozens of print and online publications. Read reports by Professor Hollis — More Here.