Campaign Action
Donald Trump built his campaign on the lie that undocumented immigrants are rapists and takers, but unlike him, they’ve actually been the ones paying into our system. In fact, numerous studies have confirmed undocumented immigrants are an integral part of the economic engine, operating small businesses, contributing billions of dollars in taxes, and helping keep Social Security alive. In short, they keep America great.
As activist and Dreamer Juan Escalante noted in his recent Vox piece, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a new report estimating that undocumented immigrants contribute nearly $12 billion in state and local taxes annually. In Trump’s home state of New York, where security at Trump Tower is costing taxpayers $500,000 a day, undocumented immigrants pay over $1.1 billion in taxes annually. That’s a lot of contributions from a lot of Miss Housekeepings:
Here’s the truth: The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that the 11 million undocumented immigrants nationwide contribute an average of 8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, which is comparable to the state and local tax rate of middle-income taxpayers.
“Undocumented immigrants also contribute billions to the Social Security program without receiving benefits unless they are able to adjust their immigration status,” Escalante notes. According to one federal official with the agency, undocumented immigrants have paid a whopping $100 billion into the Social Security fund over the past ten years:
Unauthorized workers are paying an estimated $13 billion a year in social security taxes and only getting around $1 billion back, according to a senior government statistician.
Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA), told VICE News that an estimated 7 million people are currently working in the US illegally. Of those, he estimates that about 3.1 million are using fake or expired social security numbers, yet also paying automatic payroll taxes. Goss believes that these workers pay an annual net contribution of $12 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.
In the unlikely event that the GOP Congress would get its freaking act together, pass comprehensive immigration reform, and finally let the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. become a part of this nation on paper, the economic benefits would be astounding. Immigrants already embody the entrepreneurial spirt, launching more than a quarter of all new businesses despite accounting for only 13 percent of the general population. Think Progress’s Esther Lee:
A recent Center for American Progress report argued that immigration reform could increase tax revenues since legal status and an eventual pathway to citizenship would mean: there would be five million more immigrants paying payroll taxes “on the books;” that immigrants would pay $69 billion more in federal taxes and $40 billion more in state and local taxes over a ten-year period; that workers would add $606 billion to the Social Security trust fund; that there would be a net $155 billion contribution to the Medicare trust fund; and that reform itself would reduce the deficit by $820 billion over the next two decades.
Many of these undocumented immigrants could easily forgo filing federal tax returns in order to stay off the government’s radar, but as Escalante writes, “paying taxes reaffirms my commitment to this country and proves that undocumented immigrants, like my family and me, are not the freeloaders Republicans make us out to be”:
Scared of what our future in the United States would look like without the proper documentation, my parents decided to recommit to their original reason for coming here: to provide a better life for my brothers and me. That goal, of course, included abiding by the laws of this country and contributing back through our taxes.
To this day, I follow this philosophy. I have never failed to file my taxes. In fact, paying my taxes is one of the few experiences that makes me feel unbound by the constraints of my lack of legal status. I live under a daily reminder that DACA, the Obama-era program that allows me to drive, work, and live free from the fear of deportation, could be terminated by the Trump administration at any point in time.
Growing up, I recall my parents feeling the same kind of way. “Ay, hijo,” my mother would tell me from time to time, “If we are to be deported, at least I hope the government takes into consideration the fact that we have always paid our taxes.”
“I am an undocumented immigrant,” Escalante concludes, “and unlike President Trump, I am willing to show my tax returns. Will the president of the United States of America demonstrate that he contributes his fair share just like undocumented immigrants like me?”