Immigrants Responsible for Problems in the U.S. Economy

Immigrants Responsible for Problems in the U.S. Economy
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Immigrants Responsible for Problems in the U.S. Economy
President Donald Trump’s idea of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border gained traction among his supporters during the 2016 presidential elections. His idea prompted widespread debate over whether he could build it and whether Mexico will be willing to pay for it. Well, while the wall did elicit reactions from Americans, the biggest issue and one that led to the talks of the wall is immigration. Immigration has divided the U.S. into two distinct parties with one side saying that there should be tougher policies to mitigate the number of immigrants making their way into the U.S. while others are insisting that the doors to the American dream should be left open. Well, the issue of immigrants has indeed been polarizing in the U.S. However, there have been arguments which indicate that having been built by immigrants, the U.S. should be willing to allow more of them into their country. But there is another issue that arises in the discussion of immigration: what should the government do with regards to illegal immigrants? Illegal immigrants are currently in their millions, and their presence in the country is considered an economic problem by some people. Lopez, Bialik, and Radford (2018) from the Pew Research Center report that 24% of immigrants in the U.S. are illegal immigrants. In another Pew Research Center article, Passel and Cohn (2017) report that illegal immigrants from Latin America are the largest group among all the immigrants with Mexico accounting for the majority of the unauthorized immigrants. But the point here is not which country ‘donates’ the largest number of illegal immigrants but how the illegal immigrants impact the U.S. economy. Well, this article seeks to dispute the notion that illegal immigrants from Latin American countries are impacting and thus responsible for the problems facing the U.S. economy.
First of all, undocumented or illegal immigrants help build the U.S. economy by paying taxes. The main reason why a majority of illegal immigrants come to America is to escape from certain issues that plague their countries. These could be hunger, corruption, high levels of poverty, and war. When these people get to the U.S., a majority of them find jobs and work hard as they attempt to bring their family members to the US. Well, as any working individuals citizens or not, these illegal immigrants pay taxes as well. In their 2017 article, Gee, Gardner, Hill, and Wiehe write that one of their key findings is that undocumented immigrants “contribute significantly to state and local taxes, collectively paying an estimated $11.74 billion a year.” This, they continue to write, is “an estimated 8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes.” The 8% is quite high compared to the 5.4% effective tax rate paid by the country’s top 1 percent taxpayers. Well, $11.74 billion every year is quite high and helps to emphasize the point that while they might be here illegally, they do contribute to the nation’s economy through their taxes significantly better than the nation’s top 1 percent taxpayers.
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