Yesterday the Washington Times reported on a new study that concludes that immigrants cost the country a staggering $9000 per person.

“This is another nail in the coffin of economic growth,” said Edwin Rubenstein, director of research and president of ESR Research, which released the report. “There is absolutely no reason immigration policy shouldn’t be discussed on its economic merits.”

Mr. Rubenstein, a former director of research at the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization, said U.S. taxpayers paid more than $9,000 for each immigrant in the country, a third of whom are believed to be in the U.S. illegally.

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The loss estimates, the report said, included $100 billion in federal taxes lost “from the reduction of native incomes caused by immigrant workers.”

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“Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax and are more likely to receive public benefits than natives,” Mr. Rubenstein said, adding that while immigrants account for 13 percent of the U.S. population, they and their children will account for more than 80 percent of the population growth through mid-century.

Mr. Rubenstein, former senior economist at W.R. Grace & Co. where he directed studies of government waste and inefficiency for the Grace Commission, said there is a “deliberate policy of the federal government to suppress the fiscal impact of immigration,” and interest groups like big business should be responsible for the information stonewall.

And while arguing that business is the beneficiary of immigration, Mr. Rubenstein said native workers are hurt the most.

“(Workers) don’t have the incentives to protest this,” he said, noting that individual losses often are small. “They are busy just putting bread on the table.”

Read the whole article here.