How Much More Would an Amnesty or Guest Worker Program add to the Fiscal Burden?
The studies noted above all agree that illegal immigration is a fiscal burden. That burden is not because the workers do not have legal documents as much as it is that they are working in low wage jobs so that any taxes they pay are significantly exceeded by the cost of the public services that they use. The low wages that these workers earn may in part be due to the fact that they are not legally entitled to work in the United States and are being exploited by their employers, but the majority of these workers are using false documents to pass themselves off as legal workers rather than working in the underground economy. For those illegal immigrants working with counterfeit documents, there is no reason to expect that giving them legal work papers would change their circumstance and allow them to earn higher wages. Another factor in the low earnings of the illegal alien population is their lack of educational preparation and their difficulty of communicating in English. This too is a
