Ask AP: Broken hips, illegal immigrants' impact

I hear so many conflicting stories on illegal immigration. Please tell me if you can how much the illegal immigrants contribute to the economy and how much they use in free services. If they all got deported, how would it affect our economy?

Cindy Garcia

Vista, Calif.

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It's tough to say how many people are in the U.S. illegally, let alone how many are working or using public resources. Every study uses rough estimates. Still, we do have some clues.

Illegal immigrants contribute to the economy whenever they pay sales tax and, indirectly through rent payments, real estate taxes.

Also, those who use false Social Security numbers pay taxes into the system they don't get back, since people here illegally aren't eligible to receive Social Security payments. In 2003 alone, the government received Social Security taxes on $57.8 billion from wage reports that couldn't be matched to the person filing.

Illegal immigrants are excluded from most federal and state entitlements like subsidized housing or food stamps, and a 2007 congressional report found they appear to contribute more than they use in services. But the money they contribute often goes to federal and state coffers, while many services they benefit from, such as health and law enforcement, come out of local government budgets.

Several studies show more than half of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants are uninsured (out of a total of 47 million uninsured people in the U.S.) and thus likely to use public emergency rooms that treat everyone regardless of ability to pay. It's difficult to calculate the amount of free health care—or, for that matter, free public-school education—they benefit from, since it simply isn't known what proportion of these services go to people who are in the country illegally.

Another cost of illegal immigrants: Their willingness to accept low wages drives down wages in some industries. Then again, if immigrants didn't take these jobs, some of them might get outsourced overseas.

Using Pew Hispanic Center and U.S. Census statistics, the independent economic research firm the Perryman Group concluded that if all illegal immigrants were deported, agriculture would lose nearly a quarter of its workers, the building maintenance industry would lose 17 percent and the construction industry would lose almost 15 percent.

Laura Wides-Munoz, Miami

Jacques Billeaud, Phoenix

Suzanne Gamboa, Washington

Associated Press Writers