Illegal Aliens Pay for Trump's Border Wall

Copyright by James Carlson

Donald Trump Visits the Border Wall in August 2024. [Evan Vucci; Associated Press]

We have all heard President Elect Donald Trump make campaign promises in the past that Mexico will pay for the new border wall. While that has not largely happened, what is clear is that illegal migrants from Mexico and elsewhere are already paying for it, to a degree. This may increase as the new administration wraps its head around the financials surrounding taxes gathered from the influx of 10 million new illegal immigrants, doubling the number that was already here a couple of years ago.

The following is a summary of the ~$100 billion in taxes paid by ~11 million undocumented workers in 2022. [Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants; July 30, 2024; Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy; https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/]

• Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.

• Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue.

• 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.

• At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion).

• Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion).

• In a large majority of states (40), undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders.

• Income tax payments by undocumented immigrants are affected by laws that require them to pay more than otherwise similarly situated U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants are often barred from receiving meaningful tax credits and sometimes do not claim refunds they are owed due to lack of awareness, concern about their immigration status, or insufficient access to tax preparation assistance.

• Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase. Under a scenario where work authorization is provided to all current undocumented immigrants, their tax contributions would rise by $40.2 billion per year to $136.9 billion. Most of the new revenue raised in this scenario ($33.1 billion) would flow to the federal government while the remainder ($7.1 billion) would flow to states and localities.

I have often wondered why the Democrats have opened the door to 10+ million undocumented workers. Was it to increase their voting base? Not likely, many are pro-life Latinos (Catholics) who would vote against the licentious practice of elective abortions, leaving Republicans in a greater position of strength in Congress than before. So why, I ask are they doing it? Are they just deaf, dumb, and blind? Well, it may be because these illegal aliens (not to be confused with ‘illegals’ - a slander) are paying for the illiberal charities of the Progressive left. In short, these undocumented workers are making the social liberal institutions solvent. Otherwise, they would collapse under their own weight.

So looking at the numbers, we find that nearly $60 Billion is put into the hands of social security and tax withholding. These funds are not connected to legal SS#s and so the money doesn’t belong to the people who are working illegally. Neither do these funds belong to the Congress who regularly spends this money on their faux charities (a violation of the separation of church and state (re: James Madison and his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments). Congress regularly spends this money and that practice needs to stop.

This money may be captured by the incoming administration with the stroke of a pen by President Donald Trump in 2025. And with this money he may fund the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE; $9.7B; FY25), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP; $9.7B; FY25), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS; $62.2B; FY25). All totaled that amounts to ~$92 Billion for Fiscal Year 2025.

As the above report summarizes, given approval for people to work here legally, even though they are not legally documented laborers, this would add another $30 Billion to the federal tax accounts. That’s nearly $90 Billion in 2022 numbers. That would fund ICE, CBP, and DHS completely. And if we may presume to double that amount to $180 Billion/year given the Biden/Harris boondoggle they created with many more illegal aliens here in 2024 than in 2022, the work of dealing with illegal immigration, including the completion of the border wall, can be paid totally by those who are here illegally.

So, let’s fully fund the completion of the border wall (material). Next, let’s increase the number of people serving in ICE, CBP, and DHS (personnel). I’ve already shown how the wall can be paid for, now let’s empower the wall with more people (Material & Manpower). This can be done with or without a draft of 18-23 year-olds who serve their nation from their neighborhoods (50 miles – 100 miles ideally).

If a draft is order by the new President, they can work once a weekend for a month for 2 years within ICE, CBP, and DHS. They can be given the usual benefits of housing and education or the usual exemptions of family and education. Or if volunteers for new hire is ordered by the President, they can become contractors with ICE, CBP, and DHS and possibly get the same benefits. Either way, this will dramatically increase the ranks of personnel working the border at the border and inside the border (no OCONUS work please; join the military). And with the illegal aliens funding their work, this improves not only our border security, it funds the future of those who immigrated legally or are descendants of legal immigration working within ICE, CBP, and DHS.

I’m not sure if the funding of ICE, CBP, and DHS is on the radar of DOGE (pronounced “dough-gee” in reference to fat calves who have a bloated “dough-gut"). As they work to reduce fraud and abuse of spending by Democrats and Republicans alike, the cowboys of DOGE (Musk and Ramaswamy) can whip the budgets of ICE, CBP, and DHS into shape and “move along” from bloated federal spending. As illegal aliens work in our nation’s cities and infrastructure to take advantage of the same, we can take advantage of their tax withholding to fund the problems they have in fact created. And as Mexico has not fully funded the border wall to date, illegal immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere around the world may in fact make the final payment on a completed wall at the border once Mr. Trump and team enters office on 20 January 2025.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!