Illegal immigrants, taxes, unemployment benefits and you
The follow up to Illegal immigrants, American agriculture and you
I wrote this before Trump was elected 45th President of the United States, back when there were initial rumblings of building a wall. It struck a chord with me, and below was the end result. The figures have to be tweaked and updated, but the rest still holds up.
DISCLAIMER: The IRS estimates that about 6 million unauthorized immigrants file individual income tax returns each year. Research reviewed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that between 50 percent and 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes. In spite of this, there is still quite a bit of money being pissed down the drain year after year.
Most Americans underestimate how much illegal aliens cost us each year. Looking at the Heritage Foundation study, you will find that the average illegal household pays about $10,334 annually in taxes. The disparity lies in the fact that the average illegal household receives around $24,721 in government benefits (this includes direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education benefits, population-based services, interest and other spending, and pure public goods expenditures) annually. For comparison, the average households with college-educated heads received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. Now, looking at these figures, we can conclude that the average household of illegals costs taxpayers $14,387 per annum.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that there are 3,444,955 households of illegals in the US, containing no more than 12,708,875 illegal immigrants. This estimate is flawed, however, because it is based off of a census study conducted in the year 2001. Its strange how immigrants flood into our country and hop the border in droves, yet the amount of illegal immigrants has stayed roughly the same. A more apt estimate would be the one conducted by Ann Coulter in her book Adios, America! in which she cites a study by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Barlett and Steele that estimates an average of 3 million illegal aliens are coming in yearly enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners. Coulter also cites a study Fred Elbel done in 2007 that estimates there were 20 million illegal immigrants residing in the US in 2005.
Taking these new figures, we can calculate that there are close to 50 million illegal immigrants currently in the US. However, since I understand these studies are just estimates; I will use a more conservative estimate of 35 million. This new number of illegals is close to 3.5x the Heritage Foundation’s estimate, so we arrive at 12,057,343 households of illegals. AII of these households are costing US taxpayers $14,387 per annum. Multiply these two numbers and you get the cost of illegal immigration to the US: $173,468,986,547.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contractor, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed 651 of nearly 652 miles of fencing mandated by Congress in 2005, which was a part of the DHS Secure Border Initiative (SBI). The price per mile (PPM) ranged from $400,000 to $15.1 million, for an average of $3.9 million PPM. The USA has close to 2,000 miles bordering Mexico and other areas illegal aliens typically trek though. Assuming the best option is the option for $15 million PPM, it would cost taxpayers around $30 billion to build a comprehensive wall. The price to build a wall that would last a lifetime is less than 17% of the yearly cost of illegal immigration. The choice is extremely clear.
The areas mentioned are not the only areas in which we would save. If we decided to deport all illegal aliens, we would save the $173 billion that is spent yearly on the illegal aliens. This would allow us to increase the border patrols budget by $15 billion - a more than 100% increase, $10 billion towards defense spending, $50 billion towards paying back the national deficit (or $60 billion; whatever), all while cutting taxes by 2.5% across the board. In addition, close to 29.3 million jobs would be open.
This number comes from multiplying the amount of illegal aliens by 89% (the amount over the age of 18), and then multiplying that number by 94.5% (accounting for just Obama’s fake unemployment rate in May 2015). With the amount of job openings caused by deportation, everyone drawing unemployment in the US would be able to find a job. And there would be close to 21 million jobs left, which would allow for an extraordinary amount of economic growth and would cause a massive surge in the Labor Force Participation Rate, which is seemingly lacking.
When US citizens fill those jobs, the government will see a huge leap in tax revenue. The average US citizen pays close to 30% in taxes on their average $44,888 salary. The average citizen pays approximately $13,466 in taxes per annum to the government. Multiplying this by 31.3 million (the amount of jobs that now pay income tax to the US government) gives us $421.5 billion. Allocating these funds could give us $50 billion for infrastructure repair, $10 billion for education, $15 billion for defense spending (or, again, no more than we’re spending now at all), $150 billion to pay back the national debt, and would allow us to lower taxes again, this time 5% across the board.
Freeing up all these jobs would allow us to completely cut all unemployment benefits, which would discontinue FUTA (6%) as well as SUTA (5.82%) taxes on business, while saving taxpayers 108.5 billion USD annually. 10 billion of these newfound funds could go to paying back the national deficit, all while cutting taxes yet again, another 2.5% across the board.
In conclusion, building a border wall and deporting all illegal immigrants would allow us to spend per annum: $15 billion on border patrol, $25 billion in defense spending, $50 billion for infrastructure repair, $10 billion for education, and $210 billion towards paying back the national deficit in addition to their current budgets while cutting taxes nearly 12% on business, and 10% for citizens. But we both know this won’t happen, because: reasons.
Sources:
https://immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-immigrant-tax-contributions-and-spending-power/
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_17_4/tsc_17_4_elbel.shtml
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05/the-fiscal-cost-of-unlawful-immigrants-and-amnesty-to-the-us-taxpayer
http://www.barletteandsteele.com/journalism/time_border_1.php
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-090-244R
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/05/news/economy/unemployment_benefits_extension/
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/6C563967-79A1-4FB6-8A71-B7027B536D43/0/FICAFUTASUTA.pdf
http://www.nowandfutures.com/taxes.html
your mom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States Hey fuck you, YOU do your own research