By: Ted Dabrowski and Nick Binotti
Illinois and Chicago’s recent ‘welcoming’ programs have helped boost the cost of illegal immigration in Illinois by at least $2.2 billion over the last two years, according to a Wirepoints’ review of various government grant reports, budgets and other public documents.
More than $800 million can be attributed directly to the support of the 35,000 asylum seekers that have come in on planes, trains and buses from other states. Sanctuary policies that provide free healthcare, shelter and housing, food, transportation, legal services, and other benefits all continue to incentivize “asylees” to come to Chicago.
And more than $1 billion in health care costs have been spent on undocumented illegal immigrants, many who’ve come to Illinois as part of the 10 million in U.S. border crossings since 2020. Illinois is one of just five states in the country to provide Medicaid-like benefits to undocumented illegal immigrants.
More illegal immigration also means more high-cost English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Chicago Public Schools has 5,000 new migrant students this year, costing some $120 million extra in FY2024 alone.
Unsurprisingly, many Illinoisans and Chicagoans have become angry as funding, services and facilities are increasingly being diverted towards illegal immigrants. With seemingly no plan by leaders to roll back Chicago’s or the state’s sanctuary status, count on illegal migration to continue to siphon scarce resources from Illinois residents.
It’s important to note that the above costs only touch the surface of the full migrant costs in Illinois.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the social and economic cost of illegal immigrants across the country, net of the taxes they pay in, now totals more than $150 billion annually. Illinois’ share is $3.9 billion a year, the study found.
More than $800 million on wrap-around services for asylees
Since 2022, Illinois and Chicago governments have provided or committed more than $800 million in funding to support the 35,000 migrants officially seeking asylum. That includes pass-through funding and grants from the state to Chicago, direct state and city government spending, state allocation of federal aid dollars and more.
Gov. Pritzker revealed on Nov. 16, 2023 that the state had already spent $478 million on the migrant crisis when he announced a further $160 million to be dedicated to flattening the ‘bottleneck’ created by the increase in migration in the second half of 2023. Of the $160 million in new spending, $30 million is to be dedicated to welcoming the migrants, $65 million will go to sheltering and another $65 million will go to help make the migrants independent.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also announced in late December 2023 that his administration plans on redirecting $95 million in covid-relief funds towards migrant shelter costs. The move was met with hostility from some members of the city council who decried the diversion of funds meant for city residents and the mayor’s lack of transparency over how the money would be spent.
The $95 million is on top of what the city has already spent from state and federal sources, as well as the $59 million that came “directly from Chicago taxpayers” in 2023, as WTTW recently reported.
Add it all up and Illinois governments have allocated at least $836 million to asylum seekers since July 2023. There are likely other costs that have yet to be reported or made transparent, but the list below captures the majority of what’s been allocated so far.
More than $1 billion in Medicaid-like healthcare costs
In addition to the wraparound services provided to asylum seekers, there are also state-funded Medicaid-like health benefits for all undocumented illegal migrants. Illinois, along with states like California, New York and Minnesota, is one of the few states that recently began offering Medicaid-like benefits for illegal immigrants.
The state first extended state-funded coverage to “qualified undocumented seniors” aged 65 and over in December 2020, sponsored by then-state Rep. Delia Ramirez. The next year, illegal immigrants aged 55 to 64 were added. Finally, in 2022, coverage was further expanded to those 42 and older. (The state also covers all low-income migrant children under the state’s All Kids program.)
Those coverage expansions exploded the state’s costs far above initial estimates. The original expansion coverage to illegal immigrants 65 and over was originally projected to cost just $2 million. That estimate was later revised up to $220 million, still short of reality.
In FY 2023, the state ended up spending nearly $600 million on state-funded healthcare for nearly 70,000 illegal immigrants.
Next year’s 2024 spending estimates were so large, over $1.1 billion, that Gov. Pritzker was forced to impose spending controls on the program. He cut off new enrollment, moved enrollees to managed-care plans and set a spending limit of $550 million.
Recent estimates show those controls may not be fully working as intended. The state could still spend over $600 million on healthcare for illegal immigrants in 2024.
One important point to note. Unlike most Medicaid spending, Illinois does not get a federal match for the money it spends on adult, undocumented illegal immigrants – all that money comes directly from Illinois taxpayers.
“Other” costs not being tracked
The education of migrant children – illegal or not – comes at a significant cost as well.
Most migrant children crossing the border are from low-income families and non English-speakers. They require additional resources like bilingual teachers and social services that drive up costs at Chicago Public Schools and many other school districts across the state.
As of January, CPS claimed it had approximately 5,000 migrant students enrolled, which at a $24,000 operating cost per pupil, means the district is spending an additional $120 million in FY 2024 alone. Given the difficulty of tracking and calculating the number of school age migrant students, we have only included that one year’s cost in the above migrant spending totals.
But the costs in Illinois go far beyond asylee students. Illinois is also getting its share of the 10 million undocumented illegal Illinois immigrants that have crossed the border in the most recent wave beginning in 2020.
The increase in the number of English as a Second Language, or ESL, students in Illinois serves as a base for approximating the increase in education costs, though we acknowledge the fact that not all ESL students are illegal or are native Spanish-speakers, and not all are low-income. They’ve jumped by 15 percent, or nearly 31,000, since 2019. Assuming the average operating cost of $18,000 per student in Illinois, the increase in total costs statewide due to ESL students is over $550 million annually.
We’ll be covering the full cost of ESL students in Illinois and in key school districts statewide in a future article.
Questions about accountability
Accountability for migrant spending has also been a major issue. Concerns over costly wrap-around contracts, hourly wages and rental agreements for shelters have plagued migrant support efforts since the first bus arrived.
Late last year, the Chicago Tribune reported Chicago was hit with large overtime and unrealistic work hours from one of their contractors, Favorite Healthcare Staffing, to provide services at migrant shelters. “Hundreds of Favorite Staffing workers logged 84-hour workweeks — with the overtime, paid at a 50% premium, helping balloon bills that topped at least $56 million.”
Spending on shelters across Chicago also opens up the door to potential corruption and overspending. The Block Club Chicago reported the city was “paying well more than typical rent for migrant shelter buildings” and “keeping details secret.”
Then there was the city’s plan to house migrants on a toxic site. The mayor’s plan was terminated at the last minute due to heavy pushback from the neighborhood and the state itself. A contaminated site should not have even been in consideration, let alone made it that far along in the construction process.
Accountability is further hampered by the large use of granting organizations. Take, for example, the $25 million program under the Department Of Human Services called “Welcoming Center” that serves as a ”one-stop-shop” for immigrants, refugees, etc. So far this fiscal year, 33 organizations have been awarded $17.5 million in grants under this program, as we document below.
While the state ensures a level of accountability on paper, how that manifests in practice is unknown. Compound this over multiple grants by multiple agencies, and you have many large checks being cut to all different types of organizations with questionable accountability and oversight.
Conclusion
Many of Illinois’ extra costs could have been avoided if the federal government had actually enforced the border and if Illinois and Chicago’s leadership had dropped their sanctuary statuses long ago.
Instead, border crossings have reached record levels in recent months, while Illinois and Chicago continue to incentivize more migrants to Illinois with free housing, free healthcare, free education and more.
That’s led to more than $2 billion in extra taxpayer money spent on illegal migrants so far. Those dollars come at the expense of many Illinoisans who are struggling. It’s not fair for anyone – not low-income Illinoisans, not taxpayers and not migrants, either.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- States are rejecting progressive tax schemes, moving to flat tax structures
- How much dishonesty about illegal immigrants can Gov. Pritzker cram into a minute and a half?
- Chicago Public Schools: Hundreds of new sexual abuse allegations, not stolen laptops, should get all the attention
- Chicago reporter: ‘When pensions start coming in on buses every hour, then we’ll cover them’
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
These are funds that won’t be deposited to reduce the backlog of pension payments long wast due, or used to patch up the RTA’s idiotic deficts or buy them some of those ill-conceived electric locomotive and battery bus paperweights.
Our esteemed friend ‘Pensions Paid First’ should be verbally assaulting JB the Hutt and his minions. Pitchforks and torches time!
What good would that do? Has verbally assaulting someone ever worked for you in your life? It would be better for all taxpayers if this money went towards pensions because those pensions will be paid either way. The amount of money in the pension funds is more of a report card of the states fiscal health rather than pensioners ability to get paid.
I happened to glance at a Capitol Fax post yesterday about how HFS is going to start charging copayments for non-emergency medical services to enrollees in the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults/Seniors programs (medical assistance programs for illegal aliens who don’t qualify for regular Medicaid). There were only a few comments there at the time but all of them were negative — remarking on how people with regular Medicaid or private insurance don’t get that good a deal on their copayments. I was thinking, if you’ve lost the Cap Fax commenters…..
Those grants are just vote buying and vote harvesting organizations. It’s a quid pro quo. We’ll give you grants; you get the people you help to vote Democrat.
I realize its hard to come up with a $/per asylum seeker migrant spent, but roughly $836 mil / 35,000 migrants = an astounding $23,886 per migrant!!! And then, someone in press has to ask if we are spending anything near this amount on US citizen homeless? Once again, in my NW side hood you got guys living under the bridge 20′ feet from migrant shelter if you know where to look.
Or, maybe another way to look at the situation, a lot of this migrant folks in my hood are a mom, dad & 2 kids…. does that mean we are spending on that family $23,886 x 4 = $95,544 per family???? Or who know/ who cares??? The $ spent are in outer-space w ZERO accountability folks!!!
None of these jumpers have health insurance so the entire costs are covered by municipalities which get their money from taxpayers. So are there any federal insurance programs that could be purchased by the cities on a short term basis? It’s like when we travel to other countries health care is partly covered by our insurance companies and we could get additional ins on a short term basis for a reasonable cost.
Medicaid is state administered and is for the indigent. It’s hard to see anyone except at large public hospitals where lines are long and anyone undocumented, homeless, poor, is also waiting so it’s treated like a gangbanger with gunshot wounds who survives and has zero insurance. All this is a major loss for US hospitals financially. With the large number of migrants in Chicago, this is probably getting difficult.
I was looking for the Human Fund on the list, didn’t see it but I’m guessing a few of the listed ones are similar.
This is the craziest crap ever. They can find $2B to spend on this crap without even blinking. So many things with a better return for the citizens of IL could be done…what a waste.
You are assuming they care and want the best for the citizens off Illinois. All we are to them is a dollar sign.
In the original Star Trek, on at least four occasions, Cap. Kirk cause various robots to suffer from severe internal systems failures after they had been made aware of paradoxes or other dilemmas. Being guided by logic, these artificial intelligence-types were unable to cope with logically insoluble problems, and they would self-destruct. Cap. Kirk basically talked the robots to death (description adapted from a Star Trek wiki). The sanctuary city migrant camps are the induced self-destruction of democrat run cities. They proclaim to be welcoming, open sanctuary cities for asylum seekers worldwide, but then when confronted with the paradox of… Read more »
LOL – I remember those episodes. Interesting correlation.
Keep in mind that the $2B is just for the direct cost of special welcoming programs. The full cost imposed on other services takes the figure to something more like $4 billion to $7 billion, though hard to measure.
Isn’t that number just…stunning? My God. Nobody in government talks about Millions anymore…if it isn’t Billions it isn’t on the radar…
TAKE CARE OF THE CITIZENS FIRST BEFORE THESE INVADERS …….AND SEND THEM HOME WITHOUT GIVING AWAY THE CITIZENS BENEFITS!!!!
It really doesn’t make any difference. how many laws there are to make sure employees get their government funded pensions and taxes collected will be used to make resident’s life better. The government is spending that money housing these illegals. It is called a “Welcoming Program”. All tax paying legal residents born and raised here get is the “Go to Hell Program.” If that doesn’t make you change your vote, you deserve to live on the street while illegals live in nice, warm housing you paid for.
Wirepoints, you guys are part of the problem by using the leftist terms for these illegal aliens, calling them “asylum seekers”.
I’m glad that Chicago is putting them all in these tents. We’ll know where they are when Trump gets re-elected. CBP can do a mass roundup and deportation of everyone in the tents.
The NGO’s and DHS have instructed the illegals to claim they are ‘seeking asylum’ to jump our border and game Americas Plantation handouts. Less than 5% are true asylum seekers. So Biden has instructed his DHS to lie to make breaking our immigration laws look less awful.
Gee, I don’t remember being asked to vote on this…..
How more messed up will Pritzker and Biden make things for IL citizens? We haven’t even gotten to the hockey stick part of this open border fiasco. Redirecting pension contributions – it’s the Democrats honey pot for funding malfeasance in IL.
Yes, redirecting pension contributions at a time when the pension issue is causing the tax problems that it is. The Democrats want immigration, legal or not, and Pritzker is building headlines to assure that the Democrats fawn over him and anyone that fawns over that thing has, in my book, issues.
Democrats only need to flip several purple states blue and they’ll control the federal government for 7 generations henceforth.
Democrats already control the federal government. The last election made sure it would be that way. They are going to lie, cheat and steal to make sure they stay in charge. That was a forgone conclusion when Biden was elected.
No legal agreement will stop Illinois
government from using pension funds if they want to. Any thing to make Pritzker look good to everyone outside of Illinois. He doesn’t care about those of us who live here but he sure as hell is trying to impress everyone else at our expense.