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  • 2018-12-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Banned Federal Study Show That Refugees Bring in More in Government Revenues Than They Cost? (en)
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  • One of the arguments made by the Trump administration for lowering the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States is that the costs of refugee resettlement outweigh its benefits. Estimates vary on the total annual cost of processing and resettling refugees in the U.S., but a rough breakdown by the National Conference of State Legislatures put the total expenditures for accepting approximately 70,000 refugees in 2014 at $582 million. These cost estimates rarely attempt to take into account any economic benefits refugees might provide to the countries that take them in. According to a Facebook meme making the rounds since mid-2018, just such an analysis was undertaken by the Trump administration, but the results were suppressed because they undercut the official position: A leaked document fitting that description was indeed published by the New York Times in September 2017. It was an early draft of a report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing, at the president's request, the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Times noted that: All in all, the report said, the net fiscal impact of refugees over the 10-year period was positive, not negative, to the tune of $63 billion at all levels of government: The study concluded that refugees on average had a net fiscal impact comparable to that of the general population: However, none of this information was contained in the final report delivered to the President, the Times reported, noting that some of the refugee program's proponents believed the results of the study were suppressed internally. Administration officials characterized those results as illegitimate: The Times also said that according to White House sources, Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is reputed to be the chief architect of the administration's immigration policies, personally intervened to ensure that only the costs of admitting refugees, and not the fiscal benefits thereof, were enumerated in the final report. (According to the New Yorker, the White House denied that Miller was involved in producing the report.) The Facebook meme is largely accurate, then, although it somewhat mischaracterizes what became of the original draft report. It wasn't banned from release, in that it doesn't appear the report was ever intended to be made public. It was allegedly suppressed, however, in that it never reached President Trump's desk, and all discussion of the fiscal benefits of admitting refugees into the United States was excised from the final document. (en)
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