Postville Raid Cost $6 Million But Saved Much More
By Roy Beck
Anti-enforcement entities are crowing about estimates that the raid on the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant cost more than $6 million thus far to deal with only 389 suspected illegal aliens. And that does sound like a lot. But my rough calculations suggest that if all 389 are deported, taxpayers are likely to save nearly $8 million in the first year alone.
Iowa newspapers’ keen interest in the cost is an appropriate inquiry, although the tone of the coverage seems to suggest that $6 million is an outrageously high price for such a small number of illegal aliens out of the estimated 7 million who are working illegally in the United States.
Of course, high-profile enforcement actions like this one are not designed primarily to reap direct financial benefits. Their main purpose is to frighten thousands of other employers from violating immigration laws.
And their second purpose is to make seeking illegal jobs less attractive for foreign nationals.
For laws to be massively obeyed, there has to be a reasonable chance that people (or corporations) may pay dearly for breaking the law. Rarely does the prosecution of any kind of corporate wrong-doing produce more direct society financial benefit than the cost of the prosecution. The point is to whip other corporations into lawful activity.
Nonetheless, when I put the pen to the paper, it looks like this expensive Postville raid will have directly paid for itself in less than a year.
Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has done the most exhaustive study ever of the total taxes paid by less-educated foreign workers and of the total amount of government services they consume. He found that the average household headed by the typical less-educated foreign worker costs taxpayers about $20,000 more in services than it pays in taxes each year.
So, $20,000 times 389 is $7.78 million net cost to fed, state and local governments for every year those workers remain in the United States.
Remove those 389 illegal workers and their families and you have nearly $8 million in total taxpayer savings in the first year alone! And you save another $8 million for every year that those deported workers stay out of the country and if the Postville jobs don’t later go to new illegal aliens.
Already, 302 of those detained have been convicted of criminal wrongdoing. If only those are deported, the saving the first year would be around $6 million.
Continue at NumbersUSA
