…for the Culpeper Star-Exponent…
Tuesday’s front-page story “Illegal immigration costs Va. $625 per household” doesn’t fully explain the serious flaws in a recent report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform claiming that “Virginia’s illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers nearly $1.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration.” FAIR dramatically exaggerates the fiscal “costs” of unauthorized immigrants by including the schooling of their native-born, U.S.-citizen children in its estimate, and completely discounts the economic role that unauthorized workers play as consumers who support Virginia businesses…
