Growing up in California I saw Hispanic people all around and while my neighbor was not illegal she definitely bragged about taking advantage of the state and federal benefits for having multiple children.

Now do I believe that all people do stuff like that? Having a child is not easy and having a child is not a decision that comes lightly so no I do not believe that plus it was only like $800 per child or something small which I don't really care about it.

But I was led to believe I don't even know how or where except from maybe my parents, that illegal immigrants received benefits.

I was recently taking an Uber and my driver and I started talking about politics and he mentioned how he voted for Trump despite the fact that he had been an illegal at one point before getting with a lawyer and waiting years and he was actually bitching about Venezuelans that were here legally taking away customers that he would otherwise get as an Uber driver, which I thought was ironic.

But I asked him I said did you pay taxes when you were illegal and he said yeah and I said well how did you do it without a social security number and he told me at the time what it's called and I recently looked it up it's called an ITIN. And I asked him why would people bother paying taxes and he said because when the time comes to become a legal citizen it looks beneficial if you've been paying the whole time.

I looked it up and illegal immigrants in the United States in 2023 paid: 90 billion.

$59.4 billion, which included $19.5 billion in federal income taxes and $32.3 billion in federal payroll taxes.

State and local taxes: $37.3 billion.

I found the way they pay taxes that the guy was talking about.

Income and payroll taxes: Many undocumented workers have taxes withheld from their paychecks using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN)

Also they get taxed at a higher percentage at least in the majority of States but not all.

Ineligible for benefits:

The tax payments made by undocumented immigrants often help fund public programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Insurance, even though they are ineligible to receive these benefits.

Higher effective tax rate: In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid a higher effective state and local tax rate than the top 1% of households in 40 out of 50 states.

They don't qualify for Medicaid, they don't qualify for Medicare, they don't qualify for social security.

Now I did find that they do qualify for Emergency Medicare. That's like if they're pregnant the hospital has to serve them they can't just let them die on the street according to the law.

Mandatory emergency care: The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that hospitals provide emergency treatment to anyone who needs it, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

And then I thought okay there it is that must be where all the money goes this is where we must pay out the arse to take care of these people.

This is paid for by the federal government as well as individual states.

Average spending: A cross-sectional analysis found that Emergency Medicaid spending was about 0.4% of total Medicaid spending in 2022, averaging $9.63 per resident

For fiscal year 2023, the spending was about $3.8 billion.

Okay so I'm kind of thinking that this might be a positive because they don't qualify for all these benefits, they can't vote, they spend around $90 billion in taxes annually and they only cost $4 billion in Emergency Medicare. So I'm looking at like an 86 billion dollar profit per year.

Now one of the other things I wanted to dive more into due to the fact I'm a criminal justice major but also I just wanted to see maybe if I was wrong about the crime stats too.

Crime stuff: Lower incarceration rates: In 2023, the incarceration rate for undocumented immigrants was 613 per 100,000, compared to 1,221 per 100,000 for US-born citizens

From 1980 to 2022, the number of immigrants in the US more than doubled, while the overall crime rate dropped by over 60%.

Some of the reasons people try and explain these statistics are as follows.

Some research suggests that immigrants have stronger family and community bonds, which act as a deterrent to crime.

For many undocumented immigrants, the fear of deportation serves as a powerful deterrent against committing crimes that would attract the attention of law enforcement.

Multiple studies have found that communities with higher immigrant populations tend to have lower crime rates. This effect holds true even in communities with large concentrations of undocumented immigrants. Sociologists suggest this is due to increased community cohesion and stronger social bonds.

Anyway it was rather eye-opening for myself, especially coming from California.

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