bighairymike: The report shows spending on education, healthcare, and public safety drives this cost. Mississippi taxpayers annually pay around:

$25 million to educate illegal immigrants in K-12 public schools
$77 million to provide healthcare to illegal immigrants and their children

I'm going to take wild guess that you read the auditor's summary but did not read the actual report.

Here's why.

The report states that it's healthcare spending estimate for illegal immigrants is $77 million. To reach that number, the auditor assumes that 50% of the illegal immigrant population (or all uninsured illegal immigrants) in Mississippi visit the ER once a year, accounting for $45 million of the $77 million total.

Seriously?

Every single uninsured illegal immigrant in Mississippi goes the ER once a year?

Here's another problem in the report: the auditor took illegal immigrant population estimates from two different sources, one a numerical estimate and the other a share of the population, and used them interchangeably.

Oops.

And then there's this: the report completely ignored the tax revenues collected from illegal immigrants in the state. Tax revenues that would have lessened the impact on taxpayers was never factored into the final costs.

In short, that report is worthless.

But it made you believe that "We simply cannot afford the immigrants that are already here let alone a steady torrent of incoming" because you want to believe it.

Congrats, you've been played.

Full report: osa.ms.gov: PDF document