Illegal Aliens’ Taxes Don’t Cover Their Costs
The Quote below—More Misinformation the Media
“Every year, Arturo pays thousands of dollars in taxes from the revenue produced by his central Ohio-based painting company. But he will never receive Social Security benefits. Or Medicare. Or Medicaid.
“That’s because Arturo, whose last name is not being used for his safety, is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico — one of about 6 million who pay taxes annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“A report from the office shows that 50% to 75% of undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes each year — and have been since the Internal Revenue Service created a program 25 years ago allowing people without a Social Security number to file taxes.
“When it comes to state and local taxes, undocumented immigrants pay more than $11 billion a year, according to a 2017 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. In Ohio, they paid $83.2 million in state and local taxes in 2017, according to the institute.
“When you hear people who are citizens — who may be against immigration or immigrants, especially undocumented — say, ‘Oh, they’re here and sucking up all the government resources and taking handouts and welfare.’ That’s not the case,” said Jessica Rodriguez Bell, a Columbus immigration attorney who has undocumented clients. . . .
“To some, though, the issue is not whether or not undocumented immigrants pay taxes, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank. . . . Krikorian said that the real question is what is the balance of taxes undocumented immigrants pay versus the services they consume.
“There’s no real debate about less-skilled workers,” he said. “Whether they’re legal or illegal, they use more in services than they pay in taxes.”
“A 2010 report from another Washington, D.C., think tank, the Brookings Institution, however, suggests that while U.S.-citizen children of undocumented immigrants can be costly when they’re young, those costs are paid out through a lifetime of taxes. . . .
“Jorge Beltran, the owner of Belmont Services LLC, a tax preparation company on Columbus’ Northwest Side, has been a certified acceptance agent with the IRS since 2008. The vast majority of Beltran’s clients are undocumented immigrants, and he’s passionate about letting people know that they pay taxes. . . .” –Undocumented Immigrants Pay Billions in Taxes Each Year—and Have Been for 25 Years, Danae King, The Columbus Dispatch, 3/15/21 [Link]
Fact Check on Above Quote: It is irrelevant how much in taxes illegal aliens pay, even if it is as much as $11 billion a year. The real issue is the one stated by Mark Krikorian, which this article was honest enough to acknowledge. That is whether cost of services to illegal aliens is greater or less than the taxes they pay. The Heritage Foundation did a study to find the answer, and it concluded that illegal alien households on average use $14,387 more in services per year than the total of their taxes. Thus they are a fiscal drain on the country. The article, however, tries to dodge this fact by citing a report from the Brookings Institute which “suggests” that children of illegal aliens over their lifetimes will by more than they use. The word “suggests” is probably too strong. This claim simply derives from guesswork about future social and economic trends.
The article notes that more than 50 percent or more of illegal aliens file federal income taxes. What it doesn’t mention is that they often recoup what they pay in taxes by getting refunds based on false claims about the number of dependents they have. Sometimes they can get money from this scam without paying any taxes at all. Unfortunately, their tax fraud doesn’t seem to interest the Internal Revenue Service.
The author of this article is wrong in stating that benefits from Medicaid aren’t available to illegal immigrants. In fact it provides them coverage when they use hospital emergency rooms. Currently they can’t access Social Security and Medicare, but saying that they will “never” benefit from them is far from certain. Legislation to give millions of them amnesty and a path to citizenship recently passed in the House, and the Senate may pass it too. The bottom line is that taxes from illegal aliens are no net benefit to this country.