Figure 7.16

Per capita tax increases due to 100,000 additional immigrants per year.

Figure 7.16 reveals this pattern, using the same factors as the calculations just reported, aside from timing. It shows state and local costs of about $10 per U.S. resident, consistent with our earlier calculation. However, the federal effects are delayed, so the overall stream of combined favorable effects starts off near zero, lower than the $30 our calculations suggested, but soon grows to be larger than our calculations suggested. Figure 7.16 also shows the average state and local effect for the six states of high immigration, and it is more than twice the national average, for obvious reasons.

The most striking difference between immigrants and natives is not in benefits received, but rather in taxes paid. Because immigrants on average have less education, at each age they earn less and pay substantially lower taxes, of all kinds and to all levels of government. Nevertheless, the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits, due to the special age distribution of immigrants, which is heavily concentrated in the working years, with relatively few foreign-born children and relatively few elderly. However, it is more useful also to take account of native-born children—those under age 20—with immigrant parents. In this calculation, the average immigrant or child