Immigrants Pave Way with Taxes

An interesting story about the billions of dollars legal and illegal immigrants pay in taxes each year. DP

Immigrants - both legal and illegal - are paying billions in taxes
By Scott J. Krischke

The Connection Newspapers: Every day at 5:30 a.m., Cesar, a Herndon resident who was born in Peru, wakes up, puts his clothes on and spends the day trying to find work.

“I can usually only work for a day or a week at a time, and what I’m working on is varied,” Cesar said. “Sometimes I’ll paint a house, I’ll put in a floor somewhere, I’ll work on a construction crew. It might last 15 days or it might last a month, but I go out and find what I can.”

Cesar is an undocumented immigrant who arrived in Herndon via the U.S. border with Mexico about two and a half years ago to seek better opportunities to make money for his family. He estimates that he makes between $400 and $500 a week on average.

This year, Cesar joined the ranks of taxpaying residents by filing with the Internal Revenue Service to pay his share of the federal and state income tax.

According to a recent Urban Institute study, immigrants living in Fairfax County, regardless of their legal residency status, contributed $3.2 billion in taxes in 1999 and 2000. This amounts to nearly a quarter of the total taxes paid by Fairfax residents.

“When I first came here, I didn’t know what taxes were … so I didn’t pay anything at first,” Cesar said. After learning that all workers in the United States are required to pay taxes, “I realized that I needed to pay them as well. It’s a way of being. You have to follow the rules, the law doesn’t discriminate when it comes to your legal status.”

Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.