I was planning on posting an article with statistics on illegal immigration and its impact on the U.S. economy, but searching around I found that the only substantive data was derived from polls of peoples’ feelings and attitudes about illegal immigration, such as this one poll conducted in 2004 by NPR and the Kennedy School at Harvard.

This is probably obvious, but there cannot be substative data because of the nature of the issue. Because illegal immigrants are forced to hide or obscure themselves, it makes sense that we aren’t able gather much reliable data. So, how much an average illegal immigrant makes, where they spend that money, what exact jobs they are working in, etc. is impossible to tease out.

However, there is some interesting corollary data, such as this graph from the New York Times from April 15, 2006 showing that illegal immigration probably does not affect a states’ median wage for less educated workers:

New York Times Immigration State Wages
Also, it is interesting to note that for this particular issue, there seems to be an abundance of completely fabricated statistics. This opinion piece in the LA Times addresses point for point some of the false or misleading statistics that are bandied about.