As domestic security has tightened and the economy has weakened, Americans have focused on solving the issue of illegal immigration and recovering the costs associated with it. Unfortunately, Florida has suffered increased negative impact from the cost of illegal immigration in recent years due to a rising undocumented population.
An estimated 925,000 illegal immigrants lived in Florida in 2012,
according to data from the Pew Research Center. They made up 4.8 percent of the state's population.
The annual costs to Florida's taxpayers were estimated at more than $5.2 billion,
according to data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. This deficit was calculated after state revenue from illegal immigrants totaling $261 million was counted.
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FAIR reported the following costs associated with illegal immigration in Florida, broken down as such:
- $3.34 billion went to education
- $660 million to healthcare
- $579 million to justice and law enforcement
- $317 million to public assistance
- $568 million to general government services
Nationally, according to the Pew Research Center, the undocumented immigrant population had "leveled off" after dipping some during the Great Recession.
In 2012, "an estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S., down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007 but unchanged since 2009," Pew noted.
In Florida, those figures didn’t reflect that reality
as population trends there indicated an increase in unauthorized immigrants, to 925,000 in 2012 from 875,000 in 2009.
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