This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 10th, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

One of the big concerns that drives opposition to broad-based legal immigration is the potential

for those immigrants to make use of American welfare programs.

Alex Naraste is author of the new Cato Policy Brief, Immigration and the Welfare State.

I think it was Milton Freeman who said something the effect of that a generous welfare

state is incompatible with open immigration and Republicans more recently have gone

further to say that well we just shouldn't have open immigration or some of them.

So what do we know about the degree to which

people who are first generation immigrants

to the United States collect in some sort of government largesse.

So first the laws heavily restrict their ability to use welfare programs in the United States.

And by welfare programs, I mean the two major variety.

Well, first is sort of means tested welfare programs, which are for the poor, intended for people

who are impoverished in the United States and to help them get

out of that poverty.

The second are the entitlement programs of Medicare and Social Security that are for elderly

Americans who have made a certain amount of payments into

those programs over the course of their working lives.

So when we take a look using the current population survey of the US Census, their data on the per

capital welfare costs by program, just comparing straight up all natives to all immigrants we find that immigrants

consume 39% fewer welfare benefits per capita than do Native-born Americans.

Now that's a little misleading in some ways because than Native-born Americans.

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