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josh....@aklp.org
May 29, 2026, 5:12:52 PMMay 29
to lnc-platfor...@googlegroups.com
In response to calls for deletion of platform plank 3.4: Free Trade and
Migration. I've compiled research on the topic of migration so it can be
referred back to later. These are the facts.
Economically most who argue for closed borders based upon the premise of
immigrants collecting welfare are misguided in reality. As Milton
Friedman's argument that free migration and the welfare state are
incompatible is worth engaging seriously, but history has shown it does
not hold up empirically. His son David Friedman identified the core
accounting flaw: immigrants pay into systems they often do not collect
from. The Cato Institute data confirms this at scale.
Fiscal impact:
From 1994 to 2023, immigrants generated a cumulative fiscal surplus of
$14.5 trillion in real 2024 dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings
on interest on the debt. Without immigrants, US government public debt
at all levels would already be above 205 percent of GDP, nearly twice
its 2023 level. In 2023 alone, immigrants paid $1.3 trillion in taxes
while receiving $761 billion in benefits, a net fiscal surplus of over
half a trillion dollars in a single year. Immigrants cut US budget
deficits by nearly one third in real terms over the 30-year period. Even
low-skilled immigrants without bachelor's degrees reduced the debt by
$2.8 trillion. Illegal immigrants likely reduced the deficit by at least
$1.7 trillion. Immigrants in every category of educational attainment,
including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to GDP
during the entire 30-year period. On a per capita basis, immigrants paid
nearly $100,000, or 17 percent, more in taxes than the average US-born
person over the period.
Source 1: David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar,
"Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023," Cato
Institute White Paper, February 3, 2026.
cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Pay More in Taxes Than the Average
Person," Cato at Liberty Blog, April 2026.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-pay-more-taxes-average-person
Source 3: Cato Institute, "Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by
$14.5 Trillion Since 1994," Cato at Liberty Blog, February 2026.
cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
Welfare use:
Immigrants consume 24 percent fewer welfare benefits per capita than
native-born Americans. Noncitizens including undocumented immigrants
consume 53 percent less. The reason is structural: illegal immigrants
are largely excluded from Social Security and Medicare, the two largest
public benefit programs, while frequently paying into both via ITIN
numbers and mismatched SSNs they will never collect on. Noncitizens were
76 percent more likely to be living in poverty yet received needs-based
benefits at roughly the same per capita rate as the general population,
meaning legal and practical barriers to access, not lower poverty rates,
explain the gap. In the absence of immigration status rules, immigrants
would likely cost the government more in needs-based spending given
their higher poverty rates, which makes the actual numbers more
significant, not less.
Where immigrants do access welfare programs it tends to be at the state
level and through programs like school lunch, WIC, and Medicaid,
programs available to their US-born children regardless of the parent's
status. Federal refugee resettlement programs do include direct
assistance and represent a legitimate separate policy debate, but
refugee admissions are a distinct category from general immigration
policy and should not be used to indict the broader picture.
Source 1: David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar,
"Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023," Cato
Institute White Paper, February 3, 2026.
cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
Source 2: David Bier, Cato Institute, quoted in Marketplace, "Immigrants
Reduce Deficits, Study Shows," February 23, 2026.
marketplace.org/story/2026/02/23/immigrants-reduce-deficits-study-shows
Source 3: Axios, "Immigrants Pay Far More in Taxes Than They Use,"
February 2026.
axios.com/local/chicago/2026/02/09/immigrants-taxes-benefits-cato-institute
Source 4: Cato Institute, "Immigrant and Native Consumption of
Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2023," Briefing Paper,
January 27, 2026.
cato.org/briefing-paper/immigrant-native-consumption-means-tested-welfare-entitlement-benefits-2023
Welfare fraud:
Welfare fraud is a legitimate concern and deserves serious enforcement,
but it is not an immigration-specific problem. It is a program design
problem. Every means-tested program creates fraud incentives regardless
of who is accessing it.
The data on who actually commits welfare fraud is instructive. Using US
Sentencing Commission data, noncitizens were 8 percent less likely to be
convicted of welfare fraud than citizens in 2024, and the number of
noncitizens convicted of welfare fraud fell by 57 percent between 2015
and 2024. Over the period from 2013 to 2024, noncitizens stole
approximately 30 percent fewer welfare benefits per capita than
citizens. Meanwhile the share of citizens convicted of welfare fraud is
rising.
The Feeding Our Future case in Minnesota is the most prominent recent
example cited in this debate. It is worth examining carefully. The
scheme defrauded approximately $250 million to $300 million from a
federal child nutrition program, making it the largest COVID-era fraud
case in the country. The founder and orchestrator of the scheme, Aimee
Bock, is a white American citizen who received a nearly 42-year prison
sentence in May 2026. The majority of the roughly 78 defendants charged
are of Somali descent, and the majority of those are US citizens, not
immigrants. The case is a real and serious instance of welfare fraud. It
is not evidence that immigrants are uniquely prone to it. It is evidence
that poorly designed federal programs with reduced pandemic-era
oversight will be exploited by whoever has the organizational capacity
to do so.
If the concern is welfare fraud, the solution is to eliminate or
radically restructure the programs that enable it, not to close borders
while leaving the programs intact. Native-born citizens will continue
defrauding those same programs regardless of immigration levels.
Source 1: Cato Institute, "Noncitizens Stole 30% Fewer Welfare Benefits
Than Citizens 2013-2024," Cato at Liberty Blog, January 28, 2026.
cato.org/blog/noncitizens-stole-30-fewer-welfare-benefits-citizens-2013-2024
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Still Use Much Less Welfare Than
Native-Born Americans," Cato at Liberty Blog, January 27, 2026.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-welfare-native-born-americans
Source 3: US Department of Justice, "Five More Plead Guilty in Minnesota
Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme," March 20, 2026.
justice.gov/opa/pr/five-more-plead-guilty-minnesota-feeding-our-future-fraud-scheme
Source 4: PBS NewsHour, "Woman at Center of Sprawling Minnesota Fraud
Case Gets Nearly 42-Year Prison Sentence," May 2026.
pbs.org/newshour/nation/woman-at-center-of-sprawling-minnesota-fraud-case-gets-nearly-42-year-prison-sentence
Crime:
The 2024 native-born American incarceration rate of 1,195 per 100,000 is
the highest of the three groups analyzed. Legal immigrants have the
lowest incarceration rate at 303 per 100,000, approximately 75 percent
lower than native-born Americans. Illegal immigrants have an
incarceration rate of 674 per 100,000, approximately 44 percent lower
than native-born Americans.
It is critical to note that these figures include people held in ICE
detention facilities for immigration violations, offenses that
native-born Americans are legally incapable of committing. Removing the
37,684 people held in ICE detention in fiscal year 2024, none of whom
are detained for violent or property crimes, drops the illegal immigrant
incarceration rate to 356 per 100,000, approximately 70 percent lower
than native-born Americans for actual criminal offenses. The standard 44
percent figure is therefore already the conservative estimate. The
apples-to-apples comparison on real crimes widens the gap significantly.
This pattern holds across legal status, race, ethnicity, education
level, and region of settlement. Immigrants have maintained lower
incarceration rates than the native-born population since at least 1870,
when such data were first recorded. State-level data from Texas, the
only state that tracks criminal convictions by immigration status
comprehensively, corroborates the national picture: illegal immigrants
had lower criminal conviction rates and lower arrest rates than the
native-born population.
Source 1: Cato Institute, "Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates,
2010-2024: The Demographics of American Imprisonment," Briefing Paper,
March 2026.
cato.org/briefing-paper/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2024-demographics-american-imprisonment
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates,
2010-2023," Policy Analysis No. 994, April 24, 2025.
cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2023
Source 3: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Have Lower Lifetime Incarceration
Rates than Native-Born Americans," Cato at Liberty Blog, September 2025.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-have-lower-lifetime-incarceration-rates-native-born-americans
Source 4: Cato Institute Research Brief No. 369, January 2024,
summarizing Ran Abramitzky et al., "Law-Abiding Immigrants: The
Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-Born, 1870-2020."
cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-01/Research-Brief-369.pdf
Source 5: National Bureau of Economic Research, "Law-Abiding Immigrants:
The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-Born, 1870-2020,"
Working Paper No. 31440, July 2023. Published in American Economic
Review: Insights, December 2024.
Source 6: Migration Policy Institute, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, "Explainer:
Immigrants and Crime in the United States," October 2024.
migrationpolicy.org/content/immigrants-and-crime
Source 7: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael T.
Light et al., "Comparing Crime Rates Between Undocumented Immigrants,
Legal Immigrants, and Native-Born US Citizens in Texas," December 2020.
Source 8: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Cut Victimization Rates, Boost
Crime Reporting," Policy Analysis, September 2025.
cato.org/policy-analysis/immigrants-cut-victimization-rates-boost-crime-reporting
The welfare state is a state-level policy problem, not an immigration
problem. The data shows immigrants are net fiscal contributors at every
education level, use welfare at significantly lower rates than
native-born citizens on a per capita basis, commit welfare fraud at
lower rates than citizens, and are incarcerated at lower rates than
native-born citizens regardless of legal status. Even the incarceration
comparison is being made with a thumb on the scale against immigrants,
since it includes people detained solely for the act of being here
without authorization. Strip that out and the gap widens dramatically.
The problems with the American welfare state are not imported and will
not be solved by closing borders. Deleting the migration plank to
accommodate a concern the evidence directly refutes means conceding a
false premise on terms the other side set. That is not how the LP should
make platform decisions.
Joshua McHoes
Alaska LP Communications Director
AK Appointee for 2026 LNC Platform Committee
Migration. I've compiled research on the topic of migration so it can be
referred back to later. These are the facts.
Economically most who argue for closed borders based upon the premise of
immigrants collecting welfare are misguided in reality. As Milton
Friedman's argument that free migration and the welfare state are
incompatible is worth engaging seriously, but history has shown it does
not hold up empirically. His son David Friedman identified the core
accounting flaw: immigrants pay into systems they often do not collect
from. The Cato Institute data confirms this at scale.
Fiscal impact:
From 1994 to 2023, immigrants generated a cumulative fiscal surplus of
$14.5 trillion in real 2024 dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings
on interest on the debt. Without immigrants, US government public debt
at all levels would already be above 205 percent of GDP, nearly twice
its 2023 level. In 2023 alone, immigrants paid $1.3 trillion in taxes
while receiving $761 billion in benefits, a net fiscal surplus of over
half a trillion dollars in a single year. Immigrants cut US budget
deficits by nearly one third in real terms over the 30-year period. Even
low-skilled immigrants without bachelor's degrees reduced the debt by
$2.8 trillion. Illegal immigrants likely reduced the deficit by at least
$1.7 trillion. Immigrants in every category of educational attainment,
including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to GDP
during the entire 30-year period. On a per capita basis, immigrants paid
nearly $100,000, or 17 percent, more in taxes than the average US-born
person over the period.
Source 1: David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar,
"Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023," Cato
Institute White Paper, February 3, 2026.
cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Pay More in Taxes Than the Average
Person," Cato at Liberty Blog, April 2026.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-pay-more-taxes-average-person
Source 3: Cato Institute, "Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by
$14.5 Trillion Since 1994," Cato at Liberty Blog, February 2026.
cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
Welfare use:
Immigrants consume 24 percent fewer welfare benefits per capita than
native-born Americans. Noncitizens including undocumented immigrants
consume 53 percent less. The reason is structural: illegal immigrants
are largely excluded from Social Security and Medicare, the two largest
public benefit programs, while frequently paying into both via ITIN
numbers and mismatched SSNs they will never collect on. Noncitizens were
76 percent more likely to be living in poverty yet received needs-based
benefits at roughly the same per capita rate as the general population,
meaning legal and practical barriers to access, not lower poverty rates,
explain the gap. In the absence of immigration status rules, immigrants
would likely cost the government more in needs-based spending given
their higher poverty rates, which makes the actual numbers more
significant, not less.
Where immigrants do access welfare programs it tends to be at the state
level and through programs like school lunch, WIC, and Medicaid,
programs available to their US-born children regardless of the parent's
status. Federal refugee resettlement programs do include direct
assistance and represent a legitimate separate policy debate, but
refugee admissions are a distinct category from general immigration
policy and should not be used to indict the broader picture.
Source 1: David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar,
"Immigrants' Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023," Cato
Institute White Paper, February 3, 2026.
cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
Source 2: David Bier, Cato Institute, quoted in Marketplace, "Immigrants
Reduce Deficits, Study Shows," February 23, 2026.
marketplace.org/story/2026/02/23/immigrants-reduce-deficits-study-shows
Source 3: Axios, "Immigrants Pay Far More in Taxes Than They Use,"
February 2026.
axios.com/local/chicago/2026/02/09/immigrants-taxes-benefits-cato-institute
Source 4: Cato Institute, "Immigrant and Native Consumption of
Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2023," Briefing Paper,
January 27, 2026.
cato.org/briefing-paper/immigrant-native-consumption-means-tested-welfare-entitlement-benefits-2023
Welfare fraud:
Welfare fraud is a legitimate concern and deserves serious enforcement,
but it is not an immigration-specific problem. It is a program design
problem. Every means-tested program creates fraud incentives regardless
of who is accessing it.
The data on who actually commits welfare fraud is instructive. Using US
Sentencing Commission data, noncitizens were 8 percent less likely to be
convicted of welfare fraud than citizens in 2024, and the number of
noncitizens convicted of welfare fraud fell by 57 percent between 2015
and 2024. Over the period from 2013 to 2024, noncitizens stole
approximately 30 percent fewer welfare benefits per capita than
citizens. Meanwhile the share of citizens convicted of welfare fraud is
rising.
The Feeding Our Future case in Minnesota is the most prominent recent
example cited in this debate. It is worth examining carefully. The
scheme defrauded approximately $250 million to $300 million from a
federal child nutrition program, making it the largest COVID-era fraud
case in the country. The founder and orchestrator of the scheme, Aimee
Bock, is a white American citizen who received a nearly 42-year prison
sentence in May 2026. The majority of the roughly 78 defendants charged
are of Somali descent, and the majority of those are US citizens, not
immigrants. The case is a real and serious instance of welfare fraud. It
is not evidence that immigrants are uniquely prone to it. It is evidence
that poorly designed federal programs with reduced pandemic-era
oversight will be exploited by whoever has the organizational capacity
to do so.
If the concern is welfare fraud, the solution is to eliminate or
radically restructure the programs that enable it, not to close borders
while leaving the programs intact. Native-born citizens will continue
defrauding those same programs regardless of immigration levels.
Source 1: Cato Institute, "Noncitizens Stole 30% Fewer Welfare Benefits
Than Citizens 2013-2024," Cato at Liberty Blog, January 28, 2026.
cato.org/blog/noncitizens-stole-30-fewer-welfare-benefits-citizens-2013-2024
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Still Use Much Less Welfare Than
Native-Born Americans," Cato at Liberty Blog, January 27, 2026.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-welfare-native-born-americans
Source 3: US Department of Justice, "Five More Plead Guilty in Minnesota
Feeding Our Future Fraud Scheme," March 20, 2026.
justice.gov/opa/pr/five-more-plead-guilty-minnesota-feeding-our-future-fraud-scheme
Source 4: PBS NewsHour, "Woman at Center of Sprawling Minnesota Fraud
Case Gets Nearly 42-Year Prison Sentence," May 2026.
pbs.org/newshour/nation/woman-at-center-of-sprawling-minnesota-fraud-case-gets-nearly-42-year-prison-sentence
Crime:
The 2024 native-born American incarceration rate of 1,195 per 100,000 is
the highest of the three groups analyzed. Legal immigrants have the
lowest incarceration rate at 303 per 100,000, approximately 75 percent
lower than native-born Americans. Illegal immigrants have an
incarceration rate of 674 per 100,000, approximately 44 percent lower
than native-born Americans.
It is critical to note that these figures include people held in ICE
detention facilities for immigration violations, offenses that
native-born Americans are legally incapable of committing. Removing the
37,684 people held in ICE detention in fiscal year 2024, none of whom
are detained for violent or property crimes, drops the illegal immigrant
incarceration rate to 356 per 100,000, approximately 70 percent lower
than native-born Americans for actual criminal offenses. The standard 44
percent figure is therefore already the conservative estimate. The
apples-to-apples comparison on real crimes widens the gap significantly.
This pattern holds across legal status, race, ethnicity, education
level, and region of settlement. Immigrants have maintained lower
incarceration rates than the native-born population since at least 1870,
when such data were first recorded. State-level data from Texas, the
only state that tracks criminal convictions by immigration status
comprehensively, corroborates the national picture: illegal immigrants
had lower criminal conviction rates and lower arrest rates than the
native-born population.
Source 1: Cato Institute, "Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates,
2010-2024: The Demographics of American Imprisonment," Briefing Paper,
March 2026.
cato.org/briefing-paper/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2024-demographics-american-imprisonment
Source 2: Cato Institute, "Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates,
2010-2023," Policy Analysis No. 994, April 24, 2025.
cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2023
Source 3: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Have Lower Lifetime Incarceration
Rates than Native-Born Americans," Cato at Liberty Blog, September 2025.
cato.org/blog/immigrants-have-lower-lifetime-incarceration-rates-native-born-americans
Source 4: Cato Institute Research Brief No. 369, January 2024,
summarizing Ran Abramitzky et al., "Law-Abiding Immigrants: The
Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-Born, 1870-2020."
cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-01/Research-Brief-369.pdf
Source 5: National Bureau of Economic Research, "Law-Abiding Immigrants:
The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-Born, 1870-2020,"
Working Paper No. 31440, July 2023. Published in American Economic
Review: Insights, December 2024.
Source 6: Migration Policy Institute, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, "Explainer:
Immigrants and Crime in the United States," October 2024.
migrationpolicy.org/content/immigrants-and-crime
Source 7: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael T.
Light et al., "Comparing Crime Rates Between Undocumented Immigrants,
Legal Immigrants, and Native-Born US Citizens in Texas," December 2020.
Source 8: Cato Institute, "Immigrants Cut Victimization Rates, Boost
Crime Reporting," Policy Analysis, September 2025.
cato.org/policy-analysis/immigrants-cut-victimization-rates-boost-crime-reporting
The welfare state is a state-level policy problem, not an immigration
problem. The data shows immigrants are net fiscal contributors at every
education level, use welfare at significantly lower rates than
native-born citizens on a per capita basis, commit welfare fraud at
lower rates than citizens, and are incarcerated at lower rates than
native-born citizens regardless of legal status. Even the incarceration
comparison is being made with a thumb on the scale against immigrants,
since it includes people detained solely for the act of being here
without authorization. Strip that out and the gap widens dramatically.
The problems with the American welfare state are not imported and will
not be solved by closing borders. Deleting the migration plank to
accommodate a concern the evidence directly refutes means conceding a
false premise on terms the other side set. That is not how the LP should
make platform decisions.
Joshua McHoes
Alaska LP Communications Director
AK Appointee for 2026 LNC Platform Committee
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