Immigrants

Illegal aliens or undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most safety net federal government programs but if a child is born in the US the child is a citizen and does qualify. Because of this many parents and various relatives of these child have access to benefits. This includes food stamps and medicaid. Illegal children who are not citizens do receive school meals, women' s infants and children's benefits and emergency medicaid. State and local governments bear most of the cost since illegals have a right to public education. In Minnesota this is about $15,000 per year per child. Throughout the country there are an estimated 4 million illegals going to school so the cost is about $60 billion per year. There are a total of 56 million K-12 students. Some of this cost is offset by illegals paying $12 billion per year into social security for benefits they will not receive. Many of these people use false numbers and these go into a file called earnings suspense file but there is no follow up. Illegals that file taxes use an ITIN which is a special card just for that purpose but the number is nine digits and looks like a social security number and many use this number to get jobs. All ITIN numbers start with 9 so this would be a clue if the employer was interested in such things.