David Beer

Thanks for having me on.

Absolutely.

The biggest finding is that immigrants have generated a cumulative $14.5 trillion in real 2024 dollars in deficit reductions over the last 30 years.

If you look at just their net benefit is about $1.7 trillion.

And what's really going on there is that illegal immigrants are largely excluded from the biggest public benefits programs.

And those are Social Security and Medicare.

Right.

There are some people who just get paid under the table.

They aren't paying in as much as a legal immigrant is, but they are paying taxes, particularly at the state and local level.

And even if we look at just federal income taxes, a majority of the illegal immigrant population is on the books.

They are paying into that system and then they're not drawing that benefit out later when they retire.

Yeah.

So even though they earn lower wages because they work so many more hours, they end up paying more in taxes than their share of the population would predict.

Absolutely, yes.

If we end up in a situation where we cut off immigration, our working age population would go into decline before our retiree population goes into decline.

So it's an enormous problem.

Immigration alone is not going to fix it, but it's certainly helping and pushing in the right direction.

Thanks for having me on.

This is a systematic policy by the Department of Homeland Security.

to threaten people who record their activities.