Immigrants Are a Boon to Society

Above all, immigration is a moral issue.

Most people leave their homelands to seek opportunity or safety when one or both is threatened in their homelands. They then enrich their adopted nations with their culture, cuisine, love, and dedication and are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans.

But even setting aside such huge considerations, immigrants are also a boon to society in purely economic terms.

There is a deeply held misconception among advocates of harsh immigration enforcement that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes. But this is false. It turns out that millions of undocumented immigrants pay into the funds that American citizens rely on, with no guarantee of ever being able to benefit from them.

Not only do immigrants pay sales taxes — as we all do — every time they make any kind of purchase, many also pay into Social Security.

The Social Security Administration’s bizarrely named “Earnings Suspense File” is a database of wages and taxes paid toward the fund that are not linked to an existing Social Security number. The latest available data for this file, from 2023, shows “$2.15 trillion in wages… for Tax Years 1937 through 2022.” Immigrants, in short, have potentially subsidized the Social Security system to the tune of $2 trillion.

In fact, undocumented immigrants are major taxpayers at all levels of government. In one recent tax year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded, “Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.” Of that amount, “$59.4 billion was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.”

Because of their status, tax-paying undocumented people don’t file returns — and therefore are unable to claim potential refunds after adjustments, deduct work-related tax write-offs, or benefit from tax credits such as the Child Tax Credit.

ITEP also estimates that the average undocumented person paid $8,889 in taxes in 2022. This amounts to an effective tax rate of 5.25 percent. While this is on the low side as a percentage of their wages, undocumented immigrants still pay a higher tax rate than the top 55 corporations and several billionaires.

An easy way to increase their tax rate and ensure all undocumented people pay into the Treasury is to adjust their immigration status. ITEP estimates that the federal government and state and local governments would collect a total of $40 billion more in taxes per year if undocumented people had legal status and were able to file tax returns.

There are an estimated 11.7 million undocumented people in the U.S. currently — about 3.5 percent of the population. Not only do they contribute taxes, but also labor. An estimated 8 million of them work in industries impacted by labor shortages, such as agriculture, construction, and hospitality. Rather than stealing jobs, as Trump claims, they fill jobs that native-born Americans don’t.

A major study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that while the overall impact of immigration at the state level varies, at the federal level, immigrants pay more into the government than they draw from it.

Somewhat ironically, President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are actually creating more undocumented people. Among his harshest actions has been to strip the status of more than a million people who’ve been legally residing in the U.S. for years under protections such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

It’s a neat trick: change people’s status by fiat, claim they are here illegally, and then arrest and deport them.

Trump’s ICE raids ensure that these already vulnerable workers — who contribute their money and labor to the U.S. — remain even more vulnerable and easier to exploit.

In other words, if they keep their nose to the ground, work hard, pay into taxes without expecting to reap benefits personally, they may avoid detection, and therefore deportation. That’s serfdom, not democracy.

As I’ve written before, when it comes to economics, it turns out we need immigrants more than they need us. Whether you were born here or immigrated, we all deserve a just, humane immigration system that doesn’t penalize people who contribute so much to our culture — and our economy.