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, Kentucky has suffered decreased negative impact from the cost of illegal immigration in recent years due to a falling undocumented population.
An estimated 35,000 illegal immigrants lived in Kentucky in 2012,
according to data from the Pew Research Center. They made up 0.8 percent of the state's population.
The annual costs to Kentucky’s taxpayers were estimated at $280 million, according to data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. This deficit was calculated before state revenue from illegal immigrants, totaling $17.4 million, was counted.
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FAIR reported the following costs associated with illegal immigration in Kentucky, broken down as such:
$149 million went to education
$24 million to healthcare
$22 million to justice and law enforcement
$30 million to public assistance
$54 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 Kentucky, those figures somewhat reflected that reality as
population trends there indicated a decline in unauthorized immigrants in 2012 down to below pre-Recession levels from the all-time high estimate of 50,000 in 2009.
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