Illegal Immigrants

[FlyingNarwhal]

So both articles used the Institute of Taxation & Economic Policy as their sources, I extrapolated some basic info directly from their report on the topic.


Now lets look at the same statistics in regard to the US population:

So with both these data sets we can start to dial in and see the differences:

• Illegal immigrants pay on average $1,058.18 per capita.  US citizens pay on average $2,686.35 per capita.
  
• Average tax rate for illegal immigrants is 3.52% per capita, and 8.05% per household.  Average tax rate for US citizens is 3.66% per capita, and 9.30% per household.
  

Now lets keep in mind that the above information might be a little bit skewed for a few reasons.  One being that more than 60% of the US population makes more than the average illegal immigrant household.  Lets also not forget that the we are comparing illegal immigrant state & local taxes to just state taxes for US citizens.  I also cited this source in my claim that 80% of US households pay over 8.7% in state taxes, and 20% of the population that was in the same income bracket pays on average 9.9%.



As i mentioned before, the difference we see does not even include the local taxes that American citizens pay.  That means that Americans in the same income bracket are paying 25% more on average in just state taxes, against what illegal immigrants are paying for in both state and local taxes.  When you start to think what the differences are in federal income tax or healthcare benefits, its clear that while illegal immigrants are paying taxes, they are not nearly paying enough.


Now I am all for making sure the people that earn more pay their fair share in taxes.  I'd be in favor of closing tax loopholes, abolishing income tax and significantly raising sales tax instead.  But that's another discussi

If you acknowledge that illegal immigrants do in-fact pay taxes, why did you assert in your post before it that they don’t?  IA was merely fact-checking your false claim that illegal immigrants “don’t pay taxes”.  Now you’re moving your goal posts to, “enough taxes”.  And, enough for what?

Sorry, I probably could have phrased that better.  I do not entirely share that view.  I should have wrote my state as the following (bolded is edited):

You have to think, the whole reason people are angry about illegal immigrants coming to this country is because the perception is that they are taking American jobs and not paying taxes.

I do think that as a group, illegal immigrants do not pay their fair share in taxes and it shows in the stats I provided.  And let me further clarify as well, illegal immigrants don't all pay less taxes.  There are some that pay taxes, and others who don't.  Unfortunately there is a large percentage of illegal immigrants that do not pay taxes.  In the last post I did, I showed that US citizens paid 25% more in taxes in the same income bracket when you compare "illegal immigrant state & local taxes" vs "US citizen state taxes."  I'm not going to delve into local taxes because they represent a smaller portion than state taxes (although not insignificant) and are too varied.  But I did decide to do a quick lookup on federal taxes, and things look even worse.

The best estimates come from research by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, which suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns. The most recent IRS data, from 2015, shows that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid  in income taxes.

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17229018/u...-pay-taxes

For reference it was concluded that in 2013 there was slightly over 11 million illegal immigrants, so if only 4.4 million undocumented workers filed tax returns that is less than half.  On top of that, lacking a social security number does not necessarily mean you are an illegal immigrant, so that number drops considerably again.

Illegal immigrants that have made an effort to pay taxes and contribute, I would gladly be open to amnesty and providing a path to citizenship.  But the ones that haven't should not be allowed to continue to be a drain on the country.

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Yes we send billions in foreign aid, but that is completely different then building a country's infrastructure.  We spend about $50 billion in foreign aid, a country's infrastructure costs trillions.  Think of US foreign aid similarly to how corporations donate to charities or political candidates, there is typically some kind of benefit in doing so.  A corporation might donate to a charity as a tax write off or drum up good will amongst the public, and they donate to political candidates so they can hold some kind of sway over the candidate and future policy.  That's how we dispense of foreign aid, it's not just out of the kindness of our hearts.  It's to make us look good, promote favorable trade, and gain allies.  A large chunk of our foreign aid goes to Israel, so that we can maintain a close ally in the middle east.

Border wall would be expensive, I don't support it, I think most Americans don't support it, and I don't think it will ever get passed.  I truly believe Trump talked about a wall to pander to his base.

I work in the construction supplies market, I deal with illegal immigrants on a regular basis.  A lot of them are good customers of mine, so trust me when I say I hold no personal qualms against them.  There are absolutely ways around being hired as an illegal immigrant.  Most of the time it's employers simply paying in cash under the table, which is illegal for both parties.  The employers typically avoids paying benefits amongst other things and usually can also pay their illegal employee less.  This gives the illegal immigrant a competitive edge against a US worker.  Some illegal immigrants pay taxes, not all of them.  I already extrapolated the data in a previous post so I don't really want to go into full detail here.

You're not promoting that we directly move jobs from the US to Mexico, but that could very well be the outcome, especially given the fact that it is our neighboring country.  For example San Diego, CA is 30 minutes from the border, and manufacturing is a decent part of their economy.  If we pay for Mexico's infrastructure, they could in turn offer a lower corporate tax rate because they didn't have to spend the money to build the infrastructure that brings businesses there.  In a sense, we've subsidized there ability to be more competitive in getting business to choose their country over ours.  So while there may be less illegal immigrants coming to the US, we're still seeing a detriment to jobs because they have gone to Mexico instead.  We're also not getting paid taxes from those business, and to top it all off we paid the bill for it to happen.

Who said anything about building their infrastructure, I said Invest in their infrastructure, they are already building their infrastructure, they just need some funding help to speed up the process. This doesn't require us to build anything or send any jobs to Mexico, a strong Mexico would be beneficial to the US.

How much funding?  What level of infrastructure are we investing in?  How will this benefit the US?

As a said before, we wouldn't be directly sending jobs to Mexico but that could be the unintended affect.  We share a border, if they are able to provide a lower corporate tax rate because we subsidized their building efforts, business could move to Mexico.  That does not benefit the US or it's people.

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  When you start to think what the differences are in federal income tax or healthcare benefits, its clear that while illegal immigrants are paying taxes, they are not nearly paying enough.

Paying enough for -what-.....?  If you want this to be a salient point then you;d have to bring about a state of affairs where illegal immigrants received equal services for which those taxes are levied.

Slavery is legal in America.

Not yet, but I understand you'd like to see it made so.

Less than half of illegal immigrants file federal income tax returns, and they pay on average at last 20% less than US citizens on average with state and local taxes.  Yes they do not get access to certain benefit programs like Social Security or SNAP, but they are allowed emergency services through Medicaid.  And we all know how expensive healthcare is.  Then consider other benefits such as public education for children, use of public roads & highways, police, etc.  All of those services that you don't think about every day still provide benefit to them and those benefits have cost.  Schools cost money, maintaining roads, bridges, and highways cost money, it all costs at some level.