Illegal Immigrants

[Angrboda]

You could dramatically increase the portion of taxes that illegal immigrants pay if you made them all citizens.

Not necessarily.  As many have pointed out illegal immigrants do not receive many benefits because they are not citizens, in fact the immigrants that DO pay taxes, pay out more than they receive, yes.  Once they become citizens, it's a different story.  We know that about half of the illegal immigrant population have not attained a high school diploma or equivalent, well above the national average.  Half the population can also neither speak English, or not speak it well.  We also know that on average a household only makes $30,100.  Between lack of education and language barriers, this makes lifting yourself out of poverty unlikely.  Instead what will more likely happen is the benefits that were not available prior to amnesty will now be used, creating a tax deficit for a large portion of the population given amnesty.

While it's certainly reasonable that a portion of those made citizens would start accepting benefits that they had not received before, it is an open question whether the benefits received would more than offset any additional tax revenue. Given that those illegal immigrants are currently largely self-sufficient, your speculation that once they are made citizens they would start sucking hard on the government teat appears to be a conclusion that has its basis more in anti-immigrant rhetoric than in any actual facts of the matter. One also has to factor in the absolute benefit that immigrants make to our economy, which can't realistically be balanced by any equation. We already have reports of businesses struggling due to a lack of immigrant labor. If immigration quotas were increased to allow a greater percentage of those immigrants currently coming here illegally to do so legally, it's unclear what the impact would be overall. However, to blithely assume that incoming immigrants and current illegal immigrants would suddenly become a burden to the economy seems an opinion based largely on anti-immigrant propaganda. Regardless of its source, your opinion is largely fact free and constitutes nothing more than baseless conjecture.

Despite financing and licensing obstacles, undocumented immigrants frequently start their own businesses. In 2014, almost 10 percent of the working-age undocumented population were entrepreneurs. In more than 20 states, they boast higher rates of entrepreneurship than either legal permanent residents or citizens of the same age group. These self-employed workers frequently create American jobs. Their companies also generated $17.2 billion in business income in 2014.

https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/issue...mmigrants/