Now that Democrats have fully embraced an open border agenda heading into the 2018 midterm elections, they're adding another goody into the mix.
According to New York Democrat Joe Crowley, who just lost his House seat to a 28-year-old socialist, Americans should be compensating illegal aliens who cross into the United States.
"I suggest they need to be compensated for what this administration did," Donnelly said during the Democrats' weekly news conference Wednesday.
He was referring to the Trump administration's zero tolerance border enforcement and prosecution policies.
Meanwhile, illegal immigration already costs American taxpayers billions of dollars each year. From the Federation for American Immigration Reform:
-Illegal immigration costs u.s. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. the bulk of the costs — some $84 billion — are absorbed by state and local governments.
-The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost u.s. taxpayers is an annual amount per native-headed household of nearly $1,000 after accounting for estimated tax collections. the fiscal impact per household varies considerably because the greatest share of the burden falls on state and local taxpayers whose burden depends on the size of the illegal alien population in- that locality
-Education for the children of illegal aliens constitutes the single largest cost to taxpayers, atan annual price tag of nearly $52 billion. nearly all of those costs are absorbed by state and local governments.
-At the federal level, about one-third of outlays are matched by tax collections from illegal aliens. at the state and local level, an average of less than 5 percent of the public costs associated with illegal immigration is recouped through taxes collected from illegal aliens.
-Most illegal aliens do not pay income taxes. among those who do, much of the revenues collected are refunded to the illegal aliens when they file tax returns. many are also claiming tax credits resulting in payments from the u.s. treasury.
More on the cost of illegal border crossers from the Center for Immigration Studies:
-A recent NAS study estimated the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) of immigrants by education. Averaging the cost estimates from that study and combining them with the education levels of illegal border-crossers shows a net fiscal drain of $74,722 per illegal crosser.2
-The above figures are only for the original illegal immigrants and do not include any costs for their U.S.-born descendants. If we use the NAS projections that include the descendants, the fiscal drain for border-crossers grows to $94,391 each.
-If a border wall prevented 160,000 to 200,000 illegal crossings (excluding descendants) in the next 10 years it would be enough to pay for the estimated $12 to $15 billion costs of the wall.
-If a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion — several times the wall's cost.