By The Time I Get Out Of Arizona

Looks like Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's immigration law has cost the state hundreds of millions in federal dollars as the state's 2010 Census numbers are far below predictions, meaning less federal money for the Grand Canyon State.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University explains.

The federal government uses these population counts to distribute federal dollars to the states. According to Andrew Reamer at the Brookings Institution, in 2008 the federal government distributed $866.5 billion in funds to the states based on the census population counts. Your state gets its share of the federal pie based on the number of people that are counted by the census. If there were $866.5 billion in funds to disperse in 2010, each person would be worth $2,807 in federal money to your state.

Note that I say "people" not "citizens." This is where Arizona may have lost as much as three-quarters of a billion dollars annually in federal funding. The Arizona state government could have easily put this money to good use, as according to the New York Times, the state faced a $2.6 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2011.

I come to this conclusion by comparing what the Census Bureau expected Arizona's population to be and what it really was -- or at least who was counted. Throughout the decade, the Census Bureau demographers estimate each state's population. The most recent estimates give a sense of what the Census Bureau thought the April 1, 2010, population of Arizona would be.

So, the Census Bureau demographers projected Arizona's population to be 6,668,079 but the actual number was 6,392,017 or 276,062 fewer people than what the Census Bureau expected to find. This was the largest shortfall of any state in absolute numbers. Since Arizona is a mid-sized state, as a percentage of the population this shortfall was nearly twice that of the next nearest state, Georgia.

So why was the Census Bureau wrong? Or were they wrong? It is not unreasonable to surmise one of two things were contributing factors: Either Arizona's undocumented population did not want to stick around in the state or they did not think it was wise to fill out a government form -- even if their confidentiality is strictly guarded by the U.S. Census Bureau. If the shortfall was due to the latter, then at $2,708 a person, Arizona lost out on $775 million in federal grants per year.

Arizona's Census estimates were short by more than twice any other state?  Seems to me the state just found out the price for driving people away with an odious, draconian law.  And considering Arizona's $2.6 billion budget hole, well this is bad, bad news.

So who's going to pay the price for Arizona's immigration law?  Arizona taxpayers just lost $120 in federal dollars per person.

How's that "tough law" working out for you guys now?