The House GOP is beyond ready to help President Donald Trump make life miserable for immigrants, this time in the form of the Republican tax bill that proposes putting a 5% tax on remittances.
As a general matter, it’s not that Republicans hate raising taxes; they just hate to be perceived as raising taxes. So, while it’s true that the latest tax bill is a huge giveaway to the rich, it largely does that by tilting the cuts to their benefit.
And let’s be clear: As far as the GOP is concerned, showering the wealthy with goodies by harming low-income and middle-class taxpayers, well, that’s just a feature, not a bug. But they don’t actually want to say that, so it’s cloaked in language about “big, beautiful” tax cuts for all.
Except when it comes to taxing remittances, which they are more than happy to do.
When Republicans refer to “remittances,” they’re only talking about one type: immigrants sending money back to family members in their home countries. But they’re much broader than that.
A remittance is money sent by consumers to overseas individuals or companies through a remittance transfer provider, which can be banks or other financial institutions. Sending money through a remittance provider includes certain protections, like the right to receive fee information, including any foreign taxes to be deducted, and the right to cancel a transfer. And while it’s not the only way to send money back home, it is one of the safest ways.
The GOP proposes that any noncitizen sending money back home be hit with this 5% tax—meaning they’d pay a hefty fee for sending their own money to someone else. And it’s not limited to undocumented immigrants; people with green cards and visas would also have to pay the 5% fee, but U.S. citizens would not.
But the attack on remittances isn’t just coming from the House. Trump also recently announced that he will be issuing a memo that would “shut down remittances” for anyone not legally in the country. Given the dystopian and likely illegal data sharing agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it may be possible for Trump to get enough information to pull this off.
And it’s not just Trump, either. The worst people you know have been banging the drum on this for a while now.
The U.S.-Mexico border wall, with a large gap shown, has yet to be completed or paid for by Mexico.
In 2023, when Vice President JD Vance was but a wee senator bought and paid for by Peter Thiel, he introduced a bill that would have taxed remittance transfers at 10%. His House GOP co-author, Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, spun this as a necessity for national security—because all remittances just go to drug dealers and human traffickers, as far as the GOP is concerned. In reality, remittances help strengthen and stabilize the global economy by helping fund new homes and food.
And during his chaotic and pathetic presidential run, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leaned into this idea, saying that he would impose remittance fees on anyone sending money to Mexico, which would then fund the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
We’re still a long way from Mexico paying for the wall, aren’t we? And given that it was comically expensive to build just a small amount during Trump’s first term, it doesn’t seem like nickel-and-diming immigrants is going to cover the cost.
But it will make their lives much harder, and that’s all Republicans really want anyway.
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