What happens if we threw out all the illegal immigrants?

Shirley Skeel, writing for MSN Money asks what happens if the US were to expel all undocumented immigrants. In reality, this would be politically very difficult, and logistically almost impossible.

Her verdict is that, remembering that there are considerable uncertainties in the available data, the best guess is a net loss to American citizens.

It's true that the children of undocumented immigrants consume some share of federal and state funds by attending schools, and that hospitals in border states must devote considerable resources towards treating undocumented persons who show up in the ER. As an aside, Texas has a 24% uninsured rate, which likely includes many undocumented immigrants. Christus, a Catholic hospital system based in the Southwest, spends 5% of operating expenses on charity care (very high), and has an operating margin of less than 1% (I don't know how they stay in business).

The Pew Hispanic Center has estimates for the proportion of undocumented workers in some industries. Remember that the estimates are uncertain. But, they estimate that 21% of home help workers, 13% of agriculture workers, 14% of food manufacturing workers, 12% of construction workers, and 11% of hotel workers are undocumented. We may criticize notorious xenophobe Tom Tancredo for his hypocrisy in hiring undocumented workers, not checking their papers, and still whining about illegal immigrants, but face it - it could happen to anyone.

If we were to remove all undocumented workers from these positions, we would expect some unemployed American workers to fill the gaps. If there weren't enough, employers would raise wages to attract workers.

At this point, it becomes uncertain what would happen. At the right price, unemployed workers would migrate en masse to states where they were needed. We don't know what that price is. It's not clear if there would be a temporary economic dislocation, or a devastating impact. Ray Perryman of the Perryman Group, an economic analysis firm in Texas, estimates a hit of 4.6% to the GDP. The Heritage Foundation estimates 1%, although even that wouldn't be pleasant.

Of course, if wages go up, we can expect everyone to pay more for goods and services. Perhaps they should anyway, but that does put the squeeze on the middle class. Employers might not be able to raise wages sufficiently to attract internal migrants. There's a lot of unemployed folks in Michigan, but it could be impossible for someone to sell their house and move to take a construction job in Texas unless it paid really well.