As if inflation brought on by government overspending weren't high enough already, a new study shows that Joe Biden's illegal migrant surge is costing taxpayers $20.4 billion a year, or $9,232 for each illegal migrant.

According to Fox News:

FIRST ON FOX: The number of illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. since President Biden took office will cost the U.S. taxpayer over $20 billion each year, according to a new analysis by a hawkish immigration group.

The study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which advocates for lower levels of immigration overall, calculates that the illegal immigrants who have entered the U.S. since Jan. 2021 will add an extra $20.4 billion burden a year, in addition to the $140 billion existing illegal immigrants already cost.

The analysis is based on an estimated 1.3 million released into the U.S. by immigration officials, as well as approximately one million "gotaways" — or illegal immigrants who have slipped past overwhelmed agents. FAIR calculates that each illegal immigrants costs $9,232 a year to support.

Some two million migrants have come on in at Biden's incentivization of illegal entry, flooding cities such as El Paso, which has now been described by locals as looking like "a third-world country," according to the New York Post.  Biden's catch-and-release policies of unvetted migrants into the country have created a disaster for U.S. national security, imported third-world crime, and created a huge burden for U.S. taxpayers, who are already burdened by Biden's multiple government spending packages, all of which create inflation.

The $20.4 billion figure, times four years of Joe Biden's presidency, would bring the migrant total cost to $81.6 billion for the taxpayers, which is well more than the $62.5 billion that Joe Biden has shipped to Ukraine to help that country protect its borders.

The $20.4 billion is not only fat on the fire of inflation here; it's more than the entire GDP of Haiti, about two thirds of the GDP of Honduras, and well above the GDP of Nicaragua, three countries that are prominent in their export of illegal aliens.  When you add the $140-billion cost of the existing illegal aliens into the kitty, it's above the GDPs of almost every third-world migrant-exporting country.

How much of that cash could have been sent to those places as foreign aid instead of the premium payments being shelled out for illegal migrants over here, given that the Biden administration claims to be all concerned about "root causes"?  People go where the money is, and well, when your annual income is $1,300 a year in your home country, and $9,232 in the states, plus whatever you can earn under the table, or over, what does a smart would-be migrant do?

All this so that Joe Biden can pad the voter counts and congressional seat representation on behalf of Democrats, damn the cost and too bad about inflation.

FAIR, which conducted the study, noted that the money spent on the uninvited foreign nationals could be better spent on far more citizen-critical costs at home.  According to Fox News:

FAIR, which calls for stricter border controls as part of a range of broader immigration reforms, laid out the money the estimated $20.4 billion could be spent on instead — including providing every homeless veteran in the U.S. $50K a year for the next 10 years.

The money, the analysis says, could also hire 330,000 teachers, fund and expand the National School Lunch Program, provide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to more than 7 million extra families or provide every family earning less than $50K a year a $410 grocery voucher.

It could also construct the entire wall at the southern border — a project that began under the Trump administration.

"Even in an age in which trillion dollar spending packages and are considered modest, the additional $20.4 billion the Biden Border Crisis has heaped onto the backs of American taxpayers is still staggering," Dan Stein, president of FAIR, said in a statement. "$20.4 billion could address some very important needs of the American public, instead of covering the costs of the surge of illegal migration triggered by this administration’s policies."

This shows how dishonest and irresponsible the Bidenites are in their zeal to bring in illegal migrants and release them into the interior of the country.  Some 29% of them are failing to show up to their immigration court hearings, even with Biden stacking the odds in favor of their approval to stay.  That's a recipe for chaos — and more costs, from the border, entirely imported by Joe Biden, who should be held responsible for this off-the-books spending that was never directly authorized by Congress or the American people.

Image: Screen shot from KTSM 9 video via YouTube.