Unlawful immigrants do pay some gas taxes and tolls. However, they also contribute to their wear and destruction. They create the necessity for new roads. Unlawful immigrants pay some sales, use and property taxes. But, they also create a cost for teachers, translators and new schools. At a cost of $12,300 per pupil per year, these services cost US taxpayers plenty. According to a study by Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, PhD, In 2010 the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. This generated an average annual fiscal deficit of $14,387 per household. This cost had to be borne by U.S. taxpayers. Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.
It is true that unlawful immigrants pay FICA taxes if withheld by their employer, but with average earnings of $24,800 per year, the typical unlawful immigrant will pay only about $3,700 in FICA taxes, including the match by their employer. If amnesty is granted, that individual is likely to draw more than $3,00 in Social Security and Medicare for every dollar in FICA taxes he paid. If the unlawful immigrant has three children, he/she will immediately receive $3,000 back from the federal government in child tax credits Currently, the unlawful immigrant household receives $2.40 in benefits and services for each dollar paid in taxes. The reveling portion of your post is your apparent failure to understand how much government costs and the considerable deficit caused by unlawful immigrants. Our nation does not need any more unlawful net tax consumers.
They pay taxes on every drop of gas they use; there's no way to avoid that.
They pay taxes on every taxable item they purchase anywhere. There's no tax exempt status for being an illegal immigrant.
I have a little bit of a background in accounting, and I know that no ledger is properly filled when in only contains credits. That's what your argument is... an unbalanced ledger entry made up solely of credits.
Let me try and balance that spreadsheet for you.
Your previous post put the cost of illegal immigrants at roughly five billion dollars per year. The IRS's Earning Suspense File is growing at a rate of $41 billion a year since 1990, four years after the Reagan amnesty. That file is driven by taxes paid into the SSA by illegal immigrants using bad Social Security numbers. Couple that with every dollar in taxes they pay that they can't avoid paying, and calculate how many people are employed by the Walmarts running on the buying power of 11 million illegal aliens and you realize (if you keep an open mind on the subject) that they don't cost the government as much as the government benefits financially from their presence, and THAT is why government is so recalcitrant toward controlling their entry and continued presence here.
The costs of the things that you list as being problems with illegal aliens, are DWARFED by the same costs of the same benefits received by American citizens on the dole. For every single illegal alien sucking from the government teat, there are 4 citizens doing the same.
To me, and in all the years that I've spent arguing this issue, every time someone like you makes the "negative financial impact of illegal immigrants" argument, it comes right back to two points...
- the reason that they're here is because government inaction let them in, and government inaction is what sustains their continued stay. The reason for the inaction by government is that they provide financial benefits TO the government.
- The problem with the "negative financial impact of illegal aliens" argument is that in actuality illustrates a problem with our society and our government, since all those costs ONLY exist because the programs were created by government. In other words, and if we're to believe every single other conservative talking point on our entitlement society, illegal aliens are just ONE of the SYMPTOMS of the problem that is a government-crafted entitlement society.
We can't logically make both the following arguments, repeatedly made by conservatives:
- American blacks are enslaved and victimized by the benefits they receive stemming from a runaway system of government entitlements.
- Illegal aliens are vile abusers and victimize America by way of the benefits they receive from a runaway system of government entitlements.
The problem is the system, not the people who take advantage of it.