Immigration watchdog slams ‘staggering’ $20.4 billion U.S. taxpayers spend each year on schools, hospitals and other services for the 2.3 million migrants who entered under President Joe Biden’s watch

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An immigration watchdog has slammed the ‘staggering’ $20.4 billion U.S. taxpayers spend each year on the education, healthcare and other services for the 2.3 million migrants who have entered the country under President Joe Biden’s watch.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said the Biden administration had let 1.3 million undocumented aliens across the southern border since January 2021 and an estimated 1 million had snuck in undetected.

Each of those newcomers costs taxpayers $9,232 in education, healthcare, welfare, justice, law enforcement and other government schemes each year, the group said in a statement on Tuesday.

Its president Dan Stein panned the ‘staggering’ cost of a border crisis that has been ‘heaped onto the backs of American taxpayers’, who already spend $140 billion annually on the country's long-term undocumented population.

‘$20.4 billion could address some very important needs of the American public, instead of covering the costs of the surge of illegal migration triggered by this administration’s policies,’ said Stein.

Migrants walk after being detained by U.S. border guards, having crossed into the U.S. from Mexico to turn themselves in to request asylum, in El Paso, Texas, this week

Asylum-seeking migrants, mostly from Venezuela, walk near the border wall after crossing the Rio Bravo river, in El Paso, Texas, U.S., this week

The funds would be better spent on helping homeless veterans, giving food vouchers to poor families or hiring 315,000 new cops or 330,000 teachers to make up for shortages in those sectors, he added.

Whether immigrants — undocumented or otherwise — place a burden on society is fiercely contested. The reform-minded National Immigration Forum says undocumented migrants pay hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes every year.

Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman for Arizona, says hospitals are at a ‘breaking point’ due to the costs of an influx of migrants

FAIR’s analysis comes amid record numbers of migrants entering the U.S., stoking fears of a border crisis and what many deem an ‘invasion’, even as others call for a humane approach to people from broken countries seeking work.

Customs and Border Protection agents made 21 arrests in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday and Tuesday, after four people-smuggling vehicles were chased down and halted after smashing through fences and damaging ranch land, the agency said.

Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman for Arizona, warned on Tuesday that the border state’s hospitals were at a ‘breaking point’ due to the costs of an influx of migrants, mostly from Central and South America.

‘The Biden Administration won’t pay their share and frankly doesn’t care about the financial distress being imposed on these hospitals,’ Biggs told his half-million social media followers.

A man shows a sign that reads: 'emigration is not a crime, it is a right. We want free transit', during the walk of hundreds of migrants, most of them Central Americans, in a caravan from the city of Tapachula, in Chiapas, southern Mexico, 31 August 2022

Vice President Kamala Harris, the administration’s point person on immigration, said this week that the U.S.-Mexico frontier was ‘secure’ despite the influx of millions, in comments that were widely criticized as incoherent and out of touch.

She also criticized the administration of former president Donald Trump, an anti-immigration hardliner, saying the U.S. had a ‘broken’ system for determining who could move to the U.S. that ‘still needs to be fixed’.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has been bussing hundreds of migrants to Democrat-led cities like Washington, D.C., New York and now Chicago in a political ploy designed to show them what Texas has been feeling.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey followed suit. The political move prompted Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser to call in the help of the National Guard to deal with the influx of migrants, calling the matter a 'humanitarian crisis.'

New York’s Mayor Eric Adams echoed that sentiment, requesting help to deal with the influx of migrants to his city.

More than half of Americans say the situation at the southern border amounts to an 'invasion' while another third of respondents to an Ipsos poll last month expressed worry over being replaced by illegal immigrants.

An Ipsos poll last month showed that more than half of Americans think there is an 'invasion' while another one-third expressed worry over being 'replaced' by illegal immigrants

Migrants detained by U.S. border guards this week after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico to turn themselves in to request for asylum, in El Paso, Texas

President Biden appointed Harris to tackle the 'root causes' of immigration, but so far border agents have made over 2 million border apprehensions, an all-time record, this fiscal year, which ends in October