(The Center Square) – A report from the state General Assembly takes a look at the impact of immigrants on state and local government resources.
Compiled by the Colorado Legislative Council Staff, The Impact of Immigrants on State and Local Government Resources report found that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are contributing to challenges faced by both the state’s health care and education systems.
“New immigrants contribute to ongoing financial challenges for hospitals and statutory safety net health providers in the state,” the report stated.
It found that, in 2023, UCHealth and Denver Health provided over $27 million in uncompensated care for 48,000 visits by “newly arrived immigrants” to their facilities and emergency departments.
While healthcare systems do build in some expectation for financial losses, the report said that “rising uncollectible debt – partly driven by increased immigration – continues to exacerbate financial pressures for hospital systems.”
School districts in Colorado have also been impacted, “as these populations still pose unique challenges to the state’s education system,” challenges that many of the state’s educators “lack the resources or training” to adequately address.
According to the report, it is impossible to track exactly how many immigrant students are in Colorado’s schools, as districts do not track either citizenship or immigration status of students.
Still, it found that “despite this overall drop in enrollment, the number of immigrant students in public schools has steadily increased in recent years.”
Other services the report addresses include providing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, costing $1.7 million, or the Immigration Legal Defense Fund, costing the state $700,000.
Over time, Colorado’s immigration population will likely only continue to grow, increasing costs for the state.
“The influx of immigrants into Colorado between 2022 and 2024 increased costs for local governments and the state,” the report found.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024 found that, while Colorado had a gain in population over the past year, more than half of it was driven by international migration.
Over the past few years, the bureau has improved its methodology to better estimate the number of international migrants, with 33,227 of Colorado’s 2024 net gain of 56,000 being immigrants.
Colorado has more than 159,700 “undocumented immigrants,” according to the American Immigration Council. They make up 29% of the total immigrant population in the state, which totals 557,200.
Yet, while the council states that only 29% of the immigrant population are undocumented, it also reports that only 48%, or 267,600, of the total immigrant population in the state are naturalized U.S. citizens.