Netting it out...
... and my reference, if anyone cares to do the reading...
Depending on the level of education and the age of immigrants when they enter the country, the study says, the cycle works like this: State and local governments foot the bill early in an immigrant's life.
But as immigrants leave school and become productive workers, they repay most or all of the cost of those services in the form of taxes. However, that payoff does not always go to the same state or town that paid to educate them.
Education is a critical factor in how productive immigrants become as taxpaying adults.
An immigrant with less than a high school education costs the economy about $13,000 over his life span, the study says. But immigrants with more than a high school education produce a net gain of about $198,000.
"Most studies see only the cost of education, they don't see the return,"
...
Given the estimates mentioned above, it is not unreasonable to surmise that illegal immigrants (who are typically employed as low-wage, unskilled labor, and who typically have a higher probability of being under-educated) - either considered in isolation or along with non-adult children, likely represent a net fiscal cost to the country.
At the same time, the one dominating cost they impose is on education budgets, and this is the only investment on the immigrants families that has a high probability of producing a good return to the country over the lifetime of the immigrant's children and/or their descendants.
From this, I draw the following qualitative inference:
as long as illegal immigration persists, and such immigrants are allowed to remain in the country (with possible medical aid), denying them the ability to send their children to public schools is likely to increase the net cost to the country, rather than the other way around.
http://www.eriposte.com/civil_rights/non-citizens/illegalimmigration.htm#FISCAL2
