09/05/2024
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report with three interesting points about immigrants in the U.S. (1) The U.S. labor force will grow by an extra 5.2 million workers, mostly because of increased immigration, who will boost U.S. Gross Domestic Product by a total of 2%; (3) immigrant workers will add an extra $7 trillion to the U.S. economy within the next 10 years and an extra $1 trillion in federal tax revenue; and (3) new immigrants will prevent the U.S. population from shrinking. They will be the source of all U.S. population growth by 2042. Those persons, who protest the arrival of immigrants, should look at immigrants, whether legal or illegal, on one hand and social security on the other. As more Americans retire and reach for their social security payments, the U.S. needs workers to fund social security. The social security system requires workers who pay taxes. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. More than half that amount, $59.4 billion, went to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments. More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022. Anti-immigrant persons like to decry how immigrants are taking “American” jobs (jobs which “Americans” have left open), but, at the end of the day, these same anti-immigrant persons will breathe a sigh of relief when they get a social security payment which the worker, who paid the money into the U.S. tax system, will never be able to utilize.
