In 2006, Texas State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn set out to assess the impact undocumented Texans have on the state economy and found that they contributed more to Texas than they cost the state.
“This is the first time any state has done a comprehensive financial analysis of the impact of undocumented immigrants on a state’s budget and economy,” Strayhorn, a Republican, wrote at the beginning of the report.
It was also the last time Texas did such a study.
The state has not updated Strayhorn’s analysis or conducted a similar review since it was issued 18 years ago. But a series of reports released by nonprofits and universities have confirmed what Strayhorn’s office found.
Those findings contradict notions that undocumented immigrants strain state resources — a common argument made by some state Republican leaders in interviews and lawsuits challenging the federal government’s immigration policies.
“Texans are hardworking and generous people, but the cost of illegal immigration is an unconscionable burden on the taxpayers of our great state,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in January 2021. “Texas will always welcome those who legally immigrate, but we cannot continue forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for individuals who skirt the law and skip the line.”
The studies also offer hints of the cost that Texans could pay if the incoming Trump administration follows through on its promise to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country.
Strayhorn’s analysis estimated that the absence of 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in gross domestic product, which is a measure of the value of goods and services produced in Texas.
“Blanket mass deportations would be devastating not only for Texas’ economy, but for Texas families,” said Juan Carlos Cerda, Texas state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition, a pro-immigrant group of business leaders. “We’re talking about industries like construction, agriculture, health care, manufacturing that are growing but depend heavily on immigrant labor — and many of these workers have been in the state for decades.”
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office, Texas state leaders have been eager to help him carry out his pledged immigration crackdown. A major pillar of Trump’s first campaign that lifted him to office in 2016 was a promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This time he vowed mass deportations.
Since his victory, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has offered the incoming administration 1,400 acres in the Rio Grande Valley that could be used as a staging area for deportations.
Texas is home to about 11% of immigrants in the United States and an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California.
When Strayhorn’s office studied their impact on the state’s economy, it found that undocumented Texans at the time produced about $1.6 billion in state revenues collected from taxes and other sources — exceeding the roughly $1.2 billion in state services, like public education and hospital care, they received.
The study also found that local governments “bore the burden” of $1.4 billion in health care and law enforcement costs that were not compensated by the state.
Since then, there have been a handful of studies that reached similar conclusions.
“Beneath all of the sound and fury, however, is one incontrovertible fact: TEXAS NEEDS THE WORKERS!!” stated a 2016 paper published by the Perryman Group, a Waco-based economic and financial analysis firm. The group’s review estimated that undocumented Texans contributed $11.8 billion to the state — after subtracting the $3.1 billion Texas spent on them for health care, education and other public services.
The paper added: “While there are many considerations, the fact is that undocumented workers in Texas generate millions of jobs and billions in tax revenue. Restrictive immigration policy will cause substantial economic and fiscal losses, and optimal policy would be crafted to minimize these dislocations.”
José Iván Rodríguez-Sánchez is a research scholar for the Baker Institute Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. In 2018, he replicated Strayhorn’s analysis and also found the economic benefits of undocumented Texans outweigh the costs to the state.
“These papers tell us the importance of these people for the U.S.,” Rodríguez-Sánchez said this week. “They are also not only good workers, but also they are paying taxes, buying houses or buying goods and commodities.”
State Sen. César Blanco, an El Paso Democrat, tried to require the state comptroller’s office to update the study regularly in a 2015 bill that he sponsored when he served in the Texas House. But the bill did not advance far.
In an interview, Blanco pointed to the reviews done by non-state agencies and said the information can instruct lawmakers.
“It’s important to realize that immigrants are part of the backbone of Texas’ economy,” Blanco said. “Each state should study it.”
Comptroller Glenn Hegar in 2013 said his office would update Strayhorn’s study or conduct a similar one.
“It is obvious that Texans deserve to know what illegal immigration costs the taxpayers each year,” he said in a statement at the time. “In order for Texas to truly understand the costs of illegal immigration to our state, we do need updated numbers. Whether it is updating that specific study or conducting a similar one, is something my administration will do.”
But that has not happened. His office did not respond this week to a request for comment.
In 2021, a spokesperson for Hegar’s office told the Dallas Morning News that the Legislature had not formally asked the agency to study the matter.
Disclosure: Rice University and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy.
