The cost to the metro Denver region to shelter, educate and provide healthcare services to the more than 40,000 immigrants is as high as $340 million, according to estimates from a new study.
The cost has typically been calculated using Denver-only spending data.
Although other communities — notably Aurora, Colorado Springs and Douglas County — have tried to blunt the economic impact of more than 40,000 immigrants coming with Denver officials rolling up the welcome mat, it is widely understood that Denver is not absorbing these new arrivals alone.
Released Thursday by the Common Sense Institute (CSI), the report was an attempt to calculate the costs to house, feed, educate and provide health care services to the immigrants who arrived in Denver after illegally crossing the southern border.
The study placed the high end of that cost at $340 million and the lower end at$216 million.
“We just wanted a Denver metro accounting because we know it’s not only localized to Denver,” said DJ Summers, CSI director of policy and research.
Founded in 2010, the institute is a nonprofit organization in Greenwood Village that conducts fiscal and economic research.
Early in the crisis, Denver officials decided local taxpayers would shoulder the cost.
Health care and education officials do not have the luxury of making such a choice.
Federal law requires emergency departments to provide medical treatment regardless of a patient’s immigration status or ability to pay. And school districts across the nation have been required to offer a free education since 1982, when the U.S. Supreme Court found unconstitutional a Texas statute that denied this to students based on their immigration status.
To date, the city has spent more than $70 million on its response to the crisis.
Here are some of the study's findings:
• Across the Denver metro, 17 school districts have — combined — seen more nearly 16,000 immigrant students since December 2022, including 44% or 6,919 from the five countries largely believed to be driving the influx.
• Roughly four in 10 of the students came from Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
• Denver Public Schools (DPS) saw the largest enrollment bump with5,322 total immigrant students, including 55% or 2,927 from these five countries.
• The estimated costs to date for schools across the Denver metro region could be between $98 million and $222 million, which represents about 1% of Colorado’s K-12 budget for the upcoming academic year. (Because not every district reports the number of immigrant students related to the influx, as DPS has, CSI created a range.
• The estimated $48 million Emergency Departments have provided in uncompensated health care to immigrants equates to about $2,900 per immigrant.
What sets the recent influx apart from previous migration waves is — simply put — who has been coming. Mexicans — who have deep roots in the U.S. — primarily have driven earlier waves.
Venezuelans, who have not traditionally immigrated, have increasingly fled their home country under the oppressive rule of President Nicolás Maduro, who has jailed political opponents and used food distribution as a means of social control.
Lacking a support network — typically comprised of friends and family who preceded them — and work authorization mean the waves of Venezuelan immigrants have had to rely on government assistance.
While studies have repeatedly shown a positive fiscal impact from illegal immigration — including one conducted by The Denver Gazette earlier this year — this presumes the ability to work.
“Work authorization really is key here,” Summers said.
Summers added: “Whenever economic benefits exist, they have to be working.”
In the 19 months since 100 immigrants were dropped off at Union Station downtown and left to wander in the cold 42,137 immigrants have arrived
Most of these immigrants came from South and Central America, specifically Venezuela — have arrived in Denver since December 2022.
The prevailing theory among officials for Denver’s draw has been the city’s proximity to El Paso Texas, its pivotal transportation hub and its status as a “sanctuary city.”
Broadly speaking, a sanctuary city refers to policies that discourage local law enforcement from reporting an individual’s immigration status to federal authorities.
While no one knows with certainty how of the more than 40,000 new immigrants have made Denver their new home, bus, plane and train tickets purchased for immigrants traveling elsewhere have suggested fewer than half have left.
