I'm'a be honest with you. My husband, an "illegal alien" (DUN DUN DUN) didn't file a tax return this year. He never has. Not because he doesn't want to--he does, in that weird welcoming-death way that some immigrants feel it is absolutely their duty to file income taxes. It's just that, like many undocumented immigrants, he doesn't (or didn't, until yesterday) have a birth certificate, which is the primary document which is absolutely necessary for anything ever, including receiving a tax identification number that would allow him to pay taxes. We got his birth certificate, which had been held hostage by his family (who he's not on good terms with) for several years, yesterday, too late to request an ITIN. It was issued about a decade and a half after his birth and is full of inaccuracies (or maybe it's true and he's waaayy older than he looks; it might come as a surprise to him, though).
So now that you know I'm not trying to claim that my family is personally funding Medicare or whatever, it's still interesting to see the numbers that a slew of sources are putting forward concerning the amount that undocumented migrants do contribute to tax funds. I think it would be dishonest to claim that all of the $9 billion in unclaimed social security taxes can be attributed to migrants--considering that there are only about 7 million undocumented workers, only 2/3rds of which contribute to SS funds, I'm not sure that would even be numerically possible, but then I suck at math. There are also people included in there who have made mistakes on their I-9s when penciling in their SS numbers. But undocumented workers still make up a huge chunk of that change.
This article, and many others, also wrongfully implies that undocumented workers can't get refunds on their income taxes. Sure they can, even if they have an ITIN instead of an SSN. The only thing ITIN holders can't get is the economic stimulus check (undocumented filers who have SSNs can, though).
So, just to be honest. Because I want you to judge the situation based on facts, not on anything biased toward the anti side...or even the pro side. So let me break it down.
As every article about illegal immigration states, getting accurate statistics about undocumented migrants is impossible. So I can't give you that, other than quoting the studies that come as close to reliability as possible: studies which state that 2/3rds of undocumented workers have taxes deducted from their paychecks, for example. For those migrants who have families, how many of those who don't file tax returns are actually losing out on money? The article states that, according to the most recent data (2004), 2.5 million tax returns were filed with ITINs. I'd add at least another million and a half to that for those undocumented migrants who have SSNs, bringing it up to an unscientific, but probably more accurate, 4 million undocumented migrants filing tax returns. You could probably add more to that number due to the fact that some of those are joint tax returns, but due to the possibility of mixed status couples, I don't want to make any estimates. Still, that's probably over half of undocumented workers right there. Even if you stick with the hard numbers, that's more than a third, which is a good deal for somebody who should normally avoid the government, won't get any benefits in return, and won't be penalized for not filing.
There have been some politicians (among others) who have even called the act of an undocumented worker filing taxes "tax fraud"...something which baffles me, but I guess if you want to make it illegal to pay the IRS, that's on you. What do you think? Do you think it is fraudulent to file taxes owed as an undocumented migrant? Do you think that undocumented migrants should avoid paying taxes? Do you think that not enough pay? Is this proof that they are leeching/not leeching tax payer dollars?
My husband does pay taxes, though, just so you know. He has them pulled out of his paycheck, at the rate of a single man with no dependents. Personally, I can tell you that with my DREAMer on my tax return, I only owed $700, and now I owe over $2000, so you're not losing anything on our end. I'm sure you'll be excited with the surplus once he has his ITIN and we file back taxes next year, though.
(by the way, that's me in the picture! Okay, not really, but that totally was my first real job, suit and all)