With thousands of people pouring into the streets of Minneapolis to protest the White House’s immigration crackdown, the debate over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policy has reached new heights. Identifying and deporting undocumented, so-called illegal immigrants has been a cornerstone of Trump’s two terms in office (as have his predecessors, with Barack Obama earning the label “deporter in chief” from critics).Trump has argued for years that preventing net migration would protect jobs for American workers and raise domestic wages, which would ultimately protect the US economy, flying in the face of reams of economic research that immigration is actually a net positive.

Amid renewed tensions over the growing presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in US cities, new data offers striking counter-evidence to the administration’s claims that US immigrants are draining resources from the economy.

A white paper published Tuesday by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that over the past three decades from 1994 to 2023, immigrants (both documented and undocumented) contributed more in taxes than they received in local, state, or federal benefits. The fiscal surplus from immigrants totaled $14.5 trillion over this 30-year period. In addition, according to the report, without the economic contributions of immigrants, the public debt would be more than 200%, or twice the size, of the US GDP. That’s a basic one some analysts argue that will result in a debt crisis.

The data is not fully broken down by undocumented or documented immigration status, but the report projects that undocumented immigrants reduced the national deficit by $1.7 trillion over the measured time period, contributing more than 11% of the total fiscal revenue of immigrants to the US

The ballooning national debt, which recently surpassed $38 trillion, has become a growing concern among economists, who fear the U.S. spiraling towards the debt crisis which will increase inflation and interest rates, as well as leave the US vulnerable to emergencies and breaches of national security.

“For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have falsely claimed that immigrants are behind the growth of the debt and that the US immigration system allows foreigners to take advantage of the generosity of Americans,” David Bier, report coauthor and director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote in a Substack post about the paper. “Our data completely refutes this view. Immigrants subsidize the US government.”

How immigration improves the US economy

The Cato Institute’s calculations about the relationship of immigrants to the US economy are based on the argument that the US is running serious deficits, primarily through military payments and interest on previously accrued debt. These factors do not scale with population growth and sunk costs that exist regardless of increased immigration or not.

So, Bier said good luck, a new person entering the country is unlikely to have a significant negative impact on the US debt because the lion’s share of the country’s deficit exists independently of them.

“That’s kind of the core way of thinking about what happens when there’s a new person,” Bier said.. “As long as they are on average when they pay taxes and receive benefits, then they can reduce the deficit.”

Based on models from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and data from the US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey for March 1994–2023, immigrants actually pay less in taxes and require less in education and social services than their native-born counterparts. For example, in 2023, immigrants make up 14.7% of the US population, but 17.3% of the tax share and 17.4% of the US income share. While immigrants often work in lower-wage jobs, they work at high rates (making up more than 18% of the US labor force by 2023), meaning they have higher per capita incomes and pay more taxes than their share of the population.

Because immigrants work fewer government jobs than native-born Americans, they also need fewer old-age benefits such as pensions. Many temporary or undocumented immigrants do not qualify for Social Security. Compared to US-born people who are worth about $200,000 per person in old-age benefits, immigrants are worth about $126,000 per person.

Similarly, most immigrants to the US enter the country in their twenties, meaning they have completed most of their education and require less schooling than their US-born counterparts. While US-born people cost about $105,000 per capita for education, immigrants cost less than $50,000 per capita. There is a similar pattern of immigrants spending the government less than native-born Americans for need-based services such as welfare, as well as prisons and crimes, according to the report.

Debate the economic impact of immigration

Experts have questioned how Trump’s policies, including around immigration, could affect the debt increase. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the temporary tax provisions (such as no tax on tips) in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will extend for a full 10 years, this could add up to $5.5 trillion of the national debt.

At a Cato Institute blog post from June 2025, Bier calculated that the immigration enforcement spending outlined in the bill could also grow the nation’s deficit by about $900 billion. Citing CBO data, he suggested the cost of removing 8.7 undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and parolees would amount to $900 billion, taking into account federal law enforcement costs, deportation costs, and restitution costs.

Trump’s spending bill allocates nearly $170 billion to immigration enforcement, including tripling ICE’s annual budget with a $75 billion spending increase. In September, the CBO predicted an immigration boom resulted in 290,000 immigrants being removed from the country between 2026 and 2029, and said the crackdown would reduce the US labor force. Economists note that negative net migration, which Trump advocates, is possible reduce US GDP growth at 0.4%.

Some immigration experts argue the opposite. In a 2024 tESTIMONY to the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, said that undocumented immigrants have a “net fiscal drain.”

“The fundamental reason that illegal immigrants are a net drain is that they have a lower average level of education, which results in lower average incomes and tax payments,” Camarota wrote. “It also means that a large portion are eligible for welfare programs, often receiving benefits for their US-born children.”

But even in cases where immigrants use social services, the individuals tend to be working, paying taxes, and spending money, Bier said. This shows that the US has a better chance of paying off its debt with immigrants in the country than without them.

“Immigrants, just by showing up, they reduce the debt-to-GDP (ratio), and that’s a good thing for the country,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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