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The Net Benefits and Residual Cost from U.S. Border Management of the Initially Inadmissible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2023

Scott Farrow
Scott Farrow*
Affiliation:
UMBC, Baltimore, MD and USC/CREATE, Los Angeles, CA; USA
*
*Corresponding author: e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Border management is a government activity affecting immigration and the economy. Benefit–cost and equivalent decision analyses are used to evaluate U.S. border management for 2017. Controversial issues arise. Among these are the issue of standing and the values of asylum, a criminal career, child custodial care, foreign deaths, fiscal and labor market effects, and distributional weighting. Sixteen unique shadow prices (imputed marginal value) are computed. Those shadow pries are combined with proportions and levels of border management outcomes. The aggregate result is not only a large expected present value net benefit per year from managed outcomes of $46.6 billion but also a large residual unmanaged annual cost of $23.7 billion. Significant uncertainty exists, but estimated net benefits remain positive.

Keywords

borderdecision-analysismanagementbenefit-cost

JEL classification

H5: National Government Expenditures and Related Policies D61: Allocative Efficiency • Cost–Benefit Analysis J15: Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants • Non-labor Discrimination
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 2023 , pp. 163 - 189
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis

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