PUBLIC-EXPENDITURES ON IMMIGRANTS TO THE UNITED-STATES, PAST AND PRESENT

Good data show that in the 1970s immigrants to the United States contr ibuted more to the public coffers than they received in public service s. The data, displayed here in fuller detail than in an earlier articl e in this journal, confirm the conclusion set forth by the author more than a decade earlier. This conclusion is corroborated by Canadian st udies for the 1980s and 1990s and by the crude US data available for t he most recent period. Any excess in welfare expenditures on immigrant s relative to natives is probably limited to the narrowly defined cate gory of welfare payments, which are relatively insignificant compared to expenditures on schooling and social security, and probably occurs only among older immigrants.