Immigrants and Public Benefits: What Does the Research Say?

This review of studies on the use of public benefits by immigrants takes a look at research that has been done to examine whether immigrants use public benefits at greater rates than other groups; which groups of immigrants use public benefits; immigrants’ fiscal impacts on public benefits programs; the impact of federal and state benefits legislation on immigrants’ use of public benefits; and the impact of immigration enforcement and the complexity of benefits laws on the use of public benefits. Immigrants and Public Benefits: What Does the Research Say? concludes that whether or not immigrants are found to have a negative or positive fiscal impact often depends on who has conducted the research. For example, most studies find that individual immigrants use public benefits at lower rates and at lower levels that native-born Americans. However, other studies show that immigrant-headed households — which may include U.S.-citizen children — use public benefits at a higher rate than households headed by the native-born. The household method tends to be favored by immigrant restrictionist groups. In another example, studies come to different conclusions about the costs and benefits of immigrants depending on whether they measure costs and benefits in a moment in time or over the course of many years. An immigrant household with children in local schools might be viewed as a net cost on the one hand, but if the higher productivity, earnings, and tax payments of that educated child are factored in over the long term, there is a net benefit to the system. The report also points out some areas where additional research would be useful — including whether extending Medicaid and state health benefits to undocumented immigrants would save local governments money by lowering costs associated with the provision of emergency medical care by hospitals. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

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