We can get a huge return on investment, but it will be unequally shared. The main benefactors would be working class Americans.
I like the Federation for American Immigration Reform. They are a partisan group, and they want less immigration.
Their 2017 estimate is that illegal immigration is costing US taxpayers 116 billion per year. There are other estimates, like the one you said was 54 billion.
Partisan groups have motives and biases, but they also have a need to have credibility. Do I know who is right? No.
I found one estimate that says that immigration is a net benefit of 35 billion dollars a year. I guess they could be right too. But as I said, it is important to see who gets the benefit and who pays the cost.
Herbert Grubel: The true cost of immigration
That turns my stomach. Employers benefit 435 billion because of low wages, our native population of working class Americans offset that 435 billion dollar gain by receiving $400 billion in lower wages. It is a wealth transfer from the working class to the rich.
That $400 billion figure is more important that if it costs the country 100 billion or if we actually have a net gain of 35 billion.
As I have said, the people paying the cost are not the same people getting the benefits.
We have destroyed the American working class so that rich White Americans can have servants, people to mow their lawn, clean their toilets and be their Nannys. It has hit the Black community disproportionately. I care more about Black Americans that poor people in the third world.
What we have done is wrong. And the people who do it pride themselves on their moral superiority. They get the benefits, and the loss is taken by the working class right on the chin. And if you don't agree with them you are a racist. They have destroyed the working class, and then castigated the losers for being bigots. All so they can have servants. The people that aid and abet this cause may not even know it, but they are doing and have done profound damage to American minorities and the working class as a whole. Yet I am the racist.