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GUEST: Michele Waslin, Senior Policy Analyst with the Immigration Policy Center

According to a new study, undocumented immigrants are half as likely as U.S. born Latinos to visit emergency rooms in California. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal, the study’s findings contradict rhetoric that blames undocumented immigrants for emergency room closures throughout the state. The Immigration Policy Center has also released an economic impact fact check that found immigrants to have lower emergency room visit expenditures nationwide. Comprehensively, immigrants across the country were found to be responsible for a much smaller portion of government costs than anti-immigrant voices proclaim. Conversely, they were found to be a net fiscal benefit to the U.S. economy by paying more in taxes than they consume in public benefits.