Rubio Is Wrong
And the numbers prove it.
At the 2026 Munich Security Conference last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put on a happier face than did sour and grumpy VP JD Vance a year before. Yet their messages were strikingly similar in their US centrism, bias, and xenophobia: “Mass migration is … was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West,” said Rubio.
So let’s get to it. What is destabilizing about immigration in the US? For a source, let’s look at a recent report sponsored by the Cato Institute, America’s libertarian think tank and not in any way a liberal mouthpiece. The report, Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023, was written by David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julian Salazar, published on Feb. 3 2026.
Based on a model first developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), here are the report’s key conclusions:
For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.
Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.
Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205% of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level.
Authors conclude that these estimates are most likely under-estimates because they leave out immigration’s indirect, tax-revenue-enhancing effects on economic growth. “Even by this conservative analysis, immigrants may have already prevented a fiscal crisis.”
You want charts? The report includes about four dozen of them. Here’s just one:
Some other noteworthy findings:
While the average US person still pays more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, immigrants generate more taxes and income than does that average US person; (charts 2, 3)
Immigrants are much more likely to be employed; (chart 4)
Immigrant consumer fewer government services; (chart 6)
While immigrants are more likely to be poor, they are less likely to receive any government benefits; (chart 9)
Immigrants are far less likely to be incarcerated for crimes; (chart 11)
Taxes paid by immigrants exceed benefits received every year, 1994-2003 — including low-skilled immigrants; (Chart 20).
Marco, can you hear me? The “crisis” happening right now is the rapid withdrawal of immigrants from American society, and at all levels, harming our economy and our workforce, including in vital parts of healthcare such as home health. And you are the son of Cuban immigrants. You know better.
Self-disclosure: I’m biased. My dirt-poor father and mother emigrated to the US from rural Ireland in 1930 and 1938. They worked hard every day of their lives to give their kids opportunities they could never imagine for themselves. My father was a grocery store manager and WWII veteran. My mother worked as cook and maid in the household of legendary Boston political boss James Michael Curley.
God bless America, and let’s do everything we can to save it from these thugs and bullies temporarily in charge.