What It Means for Your Wallet

Public schools bear the brunt. Children of undocumented immigrants tend to need English-as-a-second-language classes, and their parents typically don't pay enough in taxes to cover schooling. Hospitals write off the cost of medical services for undocumented immigrants. The bigger picture is more muddled. Economists at Rand have found wide variances in analyses of the costs to taxpayers of providing services to immigrants, from a "surplus" of $1,400 per immigrant to a "deficit" of $1,600. The majority of immigrants, in fact, pay taxes, even the undocumented (via fake Social Security and taxpayer IDs). Through 2002, illegals paid an estimated $463 billion into Social Security. Their takeout: almost nothing.

•WOULD AN INCREASE IN IMMIGRATION AFFECT ME DIRECTLY?

Immigrant workers pluck our grapes, stock our shelves, grill our burgers and clean our offices--for pay that lets us keep our own wallets plumper. Moreover, their domestic labor gives their employers more time to put into higher-paying work and leisure time. A vibrant laborer population could even create white-collar jobs, says Daniel Griswold, an immigration expert for the Cato Institute--say, for hotel managers hired to oversee expanding staffs. "Immigrant workers," he says, "make the economy more flexible, more dynamic."