Today at work, I was sitting down with a friend, and she told me about a friend of hers that thinks illegal immigrants should be legalized so that they will be taxed.
How about...NO.
I understand her point of view, to an extent. We have I don't even know how many illegal immigrants living here, working our jobs, making our money, and all the while, they're doing it tax free, and sometimes making more money than college educated American citizens.
Take this for example. My boyfriends Mothers Boyfriend, makes a ridiculous amount of money at his job. I believe he works for a construction or warehouse company; I'm not entirely sure. But anyways, he's not even legal! And what's worse, he isn't legal because he got caught sneaking people across the boarder. On top of that, it's like America isn't good enough for him. He's always bitching about other people and how they don't know what it's like, how hard he works, everyone is lazy. If he hates it so much, then why doesn't he just leave? I can pretty much guarantee that he's better off here than he would be in Mexico.
And as for the American government. We've been trying to reform Iraq for what, seven years now? Isn't it about time to call that a day? Why not go to Mexico, and try to reform their economy; make it better for their people so they don't feel the need to come to the US just to survive?
I am in no way racist, or against immigration. It's the illegal part that I'm against. If they want to come over here, let them. But just do it legally. Take the tests, learn the language (FOR GOD SAKES LEARN THE FREAKIN LANGUAGE. THATS ANOTHER BLOG COMPLETELY), do what you need to do to become a citizen. You want some of it, you get all of it, laws included.
should illegal immigrants be legalized so they are taxed?
By ficticious.love - Posted on March 24th, 2008
Tagged: Effective government
I am not a fan of doing anything illegally, so I do think people should not cross our borders illegally. That said, it is a very complicated issue, and our government has not handled it well. As long as it is easier to sneak in than to do it legally, illegal immigration will be a problem. I still believe, however, that people should be treated with dignity, however they got here. So, here is a document that addresses many of the myths about the impact of illegal immigrants in the U.S. The facts may surprise you:
http://www.urban.org/uploadedPDF/900898_undocumented_immigrants.pdf
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
I read the document you posted and it was factually correct but extremely misleading and deceptive. It only told a small part of the story and it does NOT even make the claim that illegal aliens pay more taxes then they consume as you posted.
Yes illegal aliens pay into Social Security about $7 billion per year. They cannot claim that money under current law but if they are ever given amnesty which will probably happen, they will get that money back. And in fact, most of them are at the low end of the earning scale so they like other low earning contributors to Social Security will get more back from Social Security then they ever pay in.
But more importantly, your article only talked about the amount they contribute to the Treasury but completely failed to mention the huge amount they consume from the Treasury which is far in excess of the amount they contribute. Here is an excellent exhaustive study. If you read that one and want more I can find lots of them.
The High Cost of Cheap Labor
That study acknowleges the $7 million that illegal aliens pay into Soial Security and also about $3 billion in other taxes they pay. But unlike the link you posted it notes that they consume about $26 billion from the Treasury leaving a deficit for citizen taxpayers to cover of about $16 billion.
And that is just at the Federal level. The situation is much worse at the State level because states get stuck with the bulk of the tab for education, healthcare and prisons. Yes, as your link noted, illegal aliens do pay sales taxes and to a minor extent, property taxes. But poor people don't earn much so they don't consume much so the taxes they pay are very low. But their kids cost a lot to educate and they have lots of kids. A K-12 education costs about $8000 per year per child or over $100,000 for a 13 year education. It does not even make sense to pretend like an illegal alien (or even two parents) earning less than $10 per hour would pay anything close to this in sales and property taxes. It is laughable. And that is before we consider healthcare. Almost half of the 40 million people in America who don't have health insurance are illegal aliens and their American born children. But those 20 million or so people don't go without healthcare. They show up in the emergency room and their medical costs get passed onto the rest of us as either higher taxes or higher health insurance premiums. I can provide you links to studies that quantify the net drain on the California Treasury at about $9 billion and Florida and Texas each at about $3 billion net loss and lower but substantial similar losses for each state that has large populations of illegal aliens. Here is a study that summarizes some of those other studies and also attempts to quantify the additional cost of making the legal. It puts the net cost, after the taxes they pay, at about $36 billion.
The Costs to Local Taxpayers for Illegal or "Guest" Workers
Here is a recent study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that does not attempt to quantify the cost at the state level but agrees with the conclusion that illegal aliens cost the states more than they consume.
The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments
And if illegal aliens are ever given amnesty and allowed to become citizens, then these costs will sky rocket because they will become eligble for the full buffet of social welfare programs. They are barred from a lot of these programs now but if they become legal they will join the ranks of the working poor and will be eligible for things like the Earned Income Tax Credit which is essentially welfare for low wage earners. Here is a study that attempts to quantify the costs of giving illegal aliens amnesty. It pegs the cost at about $2.6 trillion over several years which will make the Iraq War look like a bargain.
Amnesty Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers at Least $2.6 Trillion
The evidence is overwhelming that illegal aliens consume more taxes then they contribute and the very few studies over the years that have attempted to conclude otherwise have been badly flawed with tricks like leaving out all of the costs and only counting the revenue.
My article wasn't aimed at how much/less illegal immigrants pay in taxes. It was whether they should be deported or stay here in order to be taxed.
However, I do appreciate the imput.
Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.
Wait, what language? America doesn't have any official language, as far as I know.
Umm really?
Last time I checked The language spoken in majority in America was english.
Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.
You are exactly right!
Nobody know the exact numbers but I follow this issue very closely and most of the credible studies I read suggest that about 65% of illegal aliens are working using either a fake (felony) or stolen (felony) Social Security Number and are subject to tax withholding from their paychecks. The remainder are working under the table in the cash economy and are not subject to tax withholding. Of course most of those who do have withholding earn fairly low wages and would not pay income tax and for those few who have higher earnings, it is simple to manipulate the amount of income tax withholding by claiming more dependents on your W-2. Most are only paying Social Security and Medicare and as was posted above, this amounts to about $7 billion per year.
At the State level, almost all of them consume things so they pay a little sales tax. But if you work 2000 hours per year at $10 per hour that means you earn $20,000. Things like rent are not taxed and in a lot of states food is not taxed either. Wtih very low earnings and a large percentage of those earnings being either remitted back to family in Mexico (or wherever) or spent on non-taxable goods and services, their sales tax contribution is very low. Some argue that as renters they pay passed through property taxes; I disagree, renters only pay rent. But even if we accept that notion, they tend to live very densely with lots of them packed into single family homes. This spreads their property tax contributions pretty thin. And those few who have bought homes were almost all borrowing in the sub-prime mortgage market and we all know how that turned out although I doubt anybody has a handle on the ultimate cost of the fiasco to taxpayers.
The problem with your friend's approach is that it only looks at the tax revenue side of the equation. If you made the illegals legal, there is some upside potential to collect a little more tax. Their wages would climb a little because they would be subject to less exploitation. And you might capture some tax revenue from the 35% in the black market cash economy.
But the big problem is that their costs to taxpayers which already greatly exceed the amount of taxes they pay would climb several fold because they would be eligible for all sorts of social welfare benefits which they are currently ineligible. Right now, many of them get some food stamp assistance because they have American born children. If they were made legal almost all of them would qualify for foodstamps. Almost all of them would qualify for EITC. Many of them would qualify for various low wage earner medical benefits. They are expensive to taxpayers as illegals and they will be far more expensive to taxpayers if they join the ranks of poor citizens.