Study: Illegal workers spend $1.8 trillion

WACO, Texas, May 20 (UPI) -- Illegal workers spend nearly $1.8 trillion in the United States each year, a Texas research group said.

The Perryman Group said Texas alone would lose 1.2 million illegal workers and $220.7 billion in annual spending if undocumented workers left the country, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.

Ray Perryman, president of the firm, said the United States needed "comprehensive reform" of its immigration laws.

"If undocumented workers vanished "you would have serious economic upset," Charles Foster, chairman of Americans for Immigration Reform, said this week.

But others disagree.

A Washington, D.C., group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, believes undocumented workers take jobs away from U.S. citizens by accepting deflated wages, the Chronicle report said.