Forget Mexico, a new report suggests President Donald Trump's border wall will pay for itself.
Citing estimates developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Steven Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies says the average illegal alien costs U.S. taxpayers roughly $75,000 over their lifetime, money that could be used to build a wall if those aliens were prevented from crossing the border in the first place.
“If the border wall only kept out 100,000 people over the next 10 years, it would generate about $7.5 billion,” he says.
Camarota says the numbers don't even include the billions saved by schooling and taking care of alien children.
“People with the education level of illegal aliens, and we think they have about a 10th grade education on average, just don't pay that much in taxes and they tend to use a lot on behalf of their U.S.-born children,” he says.
The message, he believes, is one that will resonate better than what the White House is currently putting out.
“The administration should point out a very large cost associated with illegal immigration, if we reduced illegal immgration in the future we could save a lot of money and that would pay for the wall, not what to my mind is a misguided notion that Mexico will pay for the wall,” says Camarota.