Illegal immigrants in the United States are saving social security, paying $23.6 billion in taxes and committing less crime than Americans right now! They must be stopped.
What is the truth about undocumented immigrants and how much they cost the American taxpayer. Prepare to be surprised.
Illegal immigrants have become the convenient whipping boy and girl for right-wing politicians from President Donald Trump on down. The consensus on the right is they are destroying the country and costing the taxpayers billions.
Not so. Let’s go to the evidence.
Claim: Illegal Aliens pay no social security
Wrong.
Let’s consider social security and payments by undocumented. According to the Daily Beast publication “The best estimate is that five percent of the U.S. workforce is undocumented, which is some 8.1 million people. Thirty-eight percent of the 8.1 million pay social security taxes, which comes to roughly $12 billion a year.”
Remember they will never get this money because they are undocumented.
Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told the Daily Beast, “Even as it stands under current policy, unauthorized immigrants contribute positively to the financing of social security not only in terms of their own contributions, but in the succeeding generations when they have children on our soil that are citizens from day one.”
Claim: Illegal Immigrants pay no taxes
Wrong.
Actually, they pay about $24 billion a year. One of the biggest misconceptions about undocumented immigrants is that they don’t pay any taxes. In his first address to Congress, President Trump said illegal immigration costs US taxpayers “billions of dollars a year.”
That’s fake facts because illegal immigrants do in fact pay taxes too. Millions of undocumented immigrants actually file tax returns each year they can’t even use.
The Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns.
The most recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data, from 2015, states 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 $23.6 billion in income taxes.
Filing taxes helps immigrants create a paper trail and millions do.
Claim: Illegal Aliens are more likely to commit crime
Again wrong.
Illegal immigrants are jailed in fewer numbers proportionate to their population than American-born offenders.
Statistical modeling by the Cato Institute based on census information showed that “Illegal immigrants are 47 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives.” (And legal immigrants are even less likely to be in jail or prison.)
Another study, “Does Undocumented Immigration Increase Violent Crime?” which was published in the journal Criminology, looked at the influx of undocumented immigrants into communities in recent decades and concluded.
“Increased concentrations of undocumented immigrants are associated with statistically significant decreases in violent crime”
Looks to me like we need more hard-working immigrants to keep social security solvent, lessen crime rates and boost tax revenue.
And that’s the truth.
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