Florida's Illegal Alien Population is Huge, Costly and Growing

Florida's illegal alien population has, at least, doubled from 1997 to 2004 indicating a huge, costly and growing problem. Roughly 5% (850,000) of Florida's population (17,397,161) are illegal aliens.

Accurate estimates of the illegal alien population are difficult to obtain. Contributing to the inaccuracy problem are; 1) laws preventing accurate estimates such as the law preventing school districts from maintaining student's immigration status, and 2) well-publicized undercounting of illegal aliens by the Census Bureau. For example, the federal government estimates 10 million illegal aliens in the US whereas the Bear Stern report estimates upward of 20 million illegal aliens in the US.

The financial burden to Florida tax payers is horrendous. The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Floridians are estimated to be nearly one billion dollars (net outlay).  In a recent article Immigration costs more than thought a University of Florida study pegs the cost per illegal alien family at $1,800 annually.

Florida's illegal alien population is growing rapidly. Using the State of Florida's 1997 estimate of 420,000 and the Pew Hispanic Center's 2004 estimate of 850,000 the illegal alien population has doubled in the last eight years. This doubling estimate is likely low because the Pew Hispanic Center estimate is based on the Census Bureau estimate of 10 million whereas the widely accepted the Bear Stern estimate is upward of 20 million.

See also, Immigration Impact: Florida and Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population.

As you know politically correct terminology clouds honest debate of the issue. "Immigration" is really too tame for the "invasion" that is occurring. The term "identify theft" clouds the real problem of "illegal aliens" using "fraudulent documents" for the purpose of "citizenship cloning." The term "removal" is the politically correct term for "deportation." Of course, there are the euphemisms "undocumented worker" instead of "illegal alien" and the list goes on. Now the Pew Hispanic Center in it's report promotes the term "unauthorized migrant" which admittedly is more accurate than most of the other euphemisms but continues the obfuscation by claiming:

"The term "unauthorized migrant" best encompasses the population in our data because many
migrants now enter the country or work using counterfeit documents and thus are not really "undocumented," in the sense that they have documents, but not completely legal documents."

Now illegal aliens are "documented" with documents that are "not completely legal." Geesch.

As one activist astutely states "REMEMBER, IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, AT THE VERY LEAST, START BY STAYING INFORMED.