Every year undocumented immigrants, including Polish, struggle whether they have or don’t have to pay taxes on the income they have earned. Many of them dutifully fulfill their tax responsibility, undermining the accusations of stricter immigration laws supporters, who claim that not only do undocumented immigrants reside in the United States illegally, but they also refuse to pay taxes on the money they earn.
Undocumented immigrants pay their taxes that help pay the salaries of immigration officers, who then track them down and deport them; this is one of the many paradoxes of the current U.S. immigration system. During green card hearings, immigration officers often demand that undocumented immigrants prove that they’ve paid taxes for every year of their work in the in the United States, perfectly aware of the fact that the income of undocumented immigrants trying to regulate their status comes form illegal work.
Not only do undocumented immigrants pay income taxes, but they also help support the Social Security system, even though they themselves don’t have access to Social Security or Medicare benefits. As they pay forward, without receiving any benefits in return, they also help delay the insolvency date of both programs.
The decision to go to a tax expert, which most often means visiting one of the multilingual tax preparing agencies, is neither simple nor obvious for an undocumented immigrant. Undocumented immigrants often use fake Social Security numbers, and as they apply to IRS for their ITINs (Individual Taxpayer Identity Number) they are forced to reveal the false documentation they use. Fortunately, IRS eager to accept the money from undocumented immigrants, doesn’t reveal this information to the Department of Homeland Security.
Up until 2003 (the latest available data) the IRS issued 11 million ITINs. Three years ago, over a million tax forms were prepared using ITINs. In many cases the submitted forms were filled out on behalf of family units, which make it safe to assume that several million illegal immigrants paid their taxes that year (IRS doesn’t have comparative figures of how many ITINs have been granted to legal and undocumented immigrants). Based on the information collected by the Wall Street Journal, it seems that, between the years of 1996 and 2003, the federal budget received $50 million from these returns.
Undocumented immigrants pay their taxes not counting on any benefits and only hoping that one day it will help them legalize their status, as was the case in 1986. The massive character of this occurrence proves that undocumented immigrants want to be law abiding wherever they are given a chance. This is another argument for pushing through Congress a comprehensive immigration reform. If payment of taxes for the years of residing and working in the United States is to be the condition for status regulation, many undocumented immigrants won’t have any difficulty proving that they have followed the law.
