Cost of Illegal Immigration in Maryland

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, Maryland has suffered increased negative impact from the cost of illegal immigration in recent years due to a rising undocumented population.

An estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants lived in Maryland in 2012, according to data from the Pew Research Center. They made up 4.3 percent of the state's population.

The annual costs to Maryland’s taxpayers were estimated at $1.9 billion, according to data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. This deficit was calculated before state revenue from illegal immigrants, totaling $00 million, was counted.

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FAIR reported the following costs associated with illegal immigration in Maryland, broken down as such:

• $1.3 billion went to education
• $231 million to healthcare
• $177 million to justice and law enforcement
• $47.5 million to public assistance
• $105 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 Maryland, that pattern didn’t reflected that reality as population trends there indicated an increase in unauthorized immigrants, to 250,000 in 2012 from 230,000 in 2009.

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