Undocumented immigrants pay millions of dollars in state taxes — even in the reddest states
All the money undocumented immigrants pay in state taxes, in one map.
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President Donald Trump insists that there’s a national emergency at the “very dangerous southern border.”
He’s called it an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants endangering the lives and livelihoods of hardworking American citizens. And he’s used this narrative to justify taking billions of dollars from the US military to build a border wall.
But when a reporter disputed Trump’s claims earlier this month, Trump only made vague assertions about having “many stats” to back it up.
The president then repeated one of his most outrageous lies: that undocumented immigrants cost US taxpayers a ton of money.
“Billions and billions of dollars a month,” he said. “Billions and billions of dollars. And it’s unnecessary.”
I’ve written before about how false — and pervasive — this myth is. That, in fact, undocumented immigrants contribute billions of dollars in federal taxes each year, and their income taxes and payroll tax dollars are keeping Social Security and Medicare solvent.
But it’s also worth noting that undocumented immigrants are paying billions of dollars in stateand local taxes each year — in all 50 states.
While it’s impossible to get the exact numbers because of the limited data available, researchers at the left-leaning Institute for Taxation & Economic Policy estimate that undocumented workers paid a total of $11.7 billion in state and local taxes in 2014, the most recent year of data, according to their 2017 report.
That includes $7 billion in sales taxes and excise taxes, which are those paid on specific items like gas sales and vehicle registrations. Undocumented immigrants, like everyone else, pay for CONTINUE READING: Illegal immigration taxes: Unauthorized immigrants pay state taxes - Vox
