In the USA, everyone is descended from immigrants. Even the native Americans had their ancestors long ago cross over the Bearing Strait from Siberia or canoe across the ocean from the Pacific Islands or whatever. How much do *illegal* immigrants cost the US? Well, by nature of being illegal, no one can really count them all or see what they are doing, but let's apply some common sense. Put yourself in the shoes of a Honduran sweat shop worker. You work 12+ hours a day for 35 cents an hour. You saved your money by working and living in a cardboard box and eating the cheapest available food to survive only to pay that entire savings to be trafficked across Mexico into the USA. In the USA, what are you going to do - file for disability and sit around doing nothing? I doubt it. You are probably going to get a fake SSID and find a US factory to hire you, so you can make almost as much an hour as you made in Honduras in a week. The government is collecting tax under the fake SSID that no one will ever collect any money on, and you don't care, because that SSID is your ticket to a better lifestyle. Maybe you'll turn to a life of crime, but the risk of arrest and deportation is so high that you'd be much smarter to just keep flying under the radar and collecting good wages. If you are a part of that demographic, which I would bet is sizeable, you are actually funding the US government, not stealing from it. Maybe your kids are taking advantage of public education, but if you are anchored here with kids, chances are that you are either paying property taxes or paying rent to someone who is, so, most likely, you are paying into that tax pool as well. I don't condone any of this, because it's illegal to, well, to be an illegal immigrant. If you get caught, you can get deported and other really bad stuff can happen to you. But common sense tells us that these folks aren't embezzling our public funds at nearly the rate our government itself is.

Because they do. We pay for their incarceration, their deportation, their medical bills, food stamps, unemployment, jobs taken, education at in state prices, housing, etc etc! You are just in DENIAL! https://www.irli.org/new-fair-study-illegal-immigration-costs-116-billion-annually/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAs5eCBhCBARIsAEhk4r62qaemtW9CCzdJmHpRIKGTbASqOsysA9Z2Xa3eK87BcwGm9Qxqz9AaAjpREALw_wcB

OANN used to keep a real time dollar tally. they stopped when Trump's immigration policies started show a severe drop in the number of immigrants coming to America. OANN should start it up again. the amount should be closing on a trillion dollars since Biden took office.

Most news and governance is lies or exaggerations anyway, just like this is, I wish anybody could do anything about it.