The undocumented immigrants, which President Donald Trump and the ICE immigration agency have at the point of the Mira, make a large contribution to the public coffers of the United States, and the past 2023 paid 89.9 billion dollars in taxes.
According to the most recent figures of the American Immigration Council (AIC, in English), in 2023 there were 47.8 million immigrants – more undocumented documers – in the country (14.3 % of the total population), which paid in total 651.9 billion dollars in taxes.
Specifically, in July 2023 there were 11.7 million undocumented people living in the United States, according to the Migration Studies Center (CMS).
AIC emphasizes that immigrants without documentation paid federal, state and local taxes 89.8 billion dollars, and gathered 299,000 million dollars in purchasing power.
The workforce of undocumented immigrants
The Pew Research Center Research Center points out that in 2022 more than 30 million immigrants occupied a job in the United States, of which 22.2 had papers, while the rest, 8.3 million, were undocumented.
The industries that hired more undocumented people that year were that of construction (13.7 %of their workforce occupied by them), that of agriculture (12.7 %), hospitality (7.1 %), general services – that is, jobs related to aspects such as cleaning or maintenance – (6.5 %) and wholesale trade (5.5 %), according to AIC.
Followed by the transport and storage sector (5.5 %), manufacturing industry (5.4 %), professional services (4.7 %), retail trade (3.9 %) and mining (3.6 %).
AIC recalls the entrepreneurial role of immigrants who have been able to build a life in the country, and highlights that almost one in four entrepreneurs in the United States are migrants, and not only in the low categories: thus, in 2024, 230 companies in the Fortune 500 list of Forbes had been founded by immigrants or their children.
Among these companies are some of the technological giants that are today in the focus of Wall Street investors, such as Tesla, Nvidia or Super Micro Computer.
The Institute of Economic Taxation and Policy (ITEP) estimates that, if a work authorization was provided to all undocumented immigrants residing in the country in 2022, their tax contributions would increase to 136.9 billion dollars a year.
The effect of mass deportations on the economy
The Trump deportation program has resulted in the last weekend in protests against massive migrant raids by the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) in the Californian city of Los Angeles, where the Washington government deployed 2,000 National Guard soldiers.
In its 2024 report, AIC warns that a federal mass deportation plan would cause “important labor disorders” in multiple key sectors.
For example, construction and agriculture industries would lose at least one in eight workers, while in the hospitality sector, one in each fourteen employees would be deported due to their undocumented status.
In another report dated 2024, AIC warns that these expulsions by the US government could lead to a significant reduction in the tax revenues currently paid by undocumented immigrants.
Thus, 46,800 million would be lost in federal taxes, 29.3 billion in state and local taxes, 22.6 billion in Social Security and 5.7 billion in Medicare, medical insurance for people 65 years or older.
The organization alerts, in addition, that this deportation plan could cause the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to reduce between 4.2 % and 6.8 %.
While the Peterson International Economy Institute estimates that deportation between 1.3 and 8.3 million undocumented people would decrease GDP by up to 7 % by 2028.
