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. Fortunately, Georgia has suffered decreased negative impact from the cost of illegal immigration in recent years due to a falling undocumented population.
An estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants lived in Georgia in 2012,
according to data from the Pew Research Center. They made up 3.9 percent of the state's population.
The annual costs to Georgia's taxpayers were estimated at $2.4 billion,
according to data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. This deficit was calculated before state revenue from illegal immigrants totaling $142 million was counted.
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FAIR reported the following costs associated with illegal immigration in Georgia, broken down as such:
- $1.67 billion went to education
- $318 million to healthcare
- $195 million to justice and law enforcement
- $77 million to public assistance
- $138 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 Georgia, those figures reflected that reality as
population trends there indicated a decrease in unauthorized immigrants to 400,000 in 2012 from 425,000 in 2009.
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