Happy Tax Week for those dumb enough to work and pay federal personal income tax (about half of us, as Mitt Romney famously noted)…
I hope that all of you put extra postage on your tax payments this year since the money needs to go all the way to Somalia and Diego Garcia. Maybe with enough undocumented low-skill migrants our economy will be so rich that none of the native-born will have to pay taxes? There are some statistics hidden in “To File or Not to File: Undocumented Immigrants Face a Tax Return Dilemma” (New York Times):
The federal treasury could take a hit. Many undocumented immigrants have taxes withheld in every paycheck, but experts worry some could shift into under-the-table jobs. Others with less formal earnings may now skip filing a tax return — and therefore not pay federal taxes at all. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, projected lost tax revenue of about $300 billion over a decade.
Yale estimated that we were being enriched by 22 million undocumented migrants in 2016, which would mean a population of approximately 30 million enrichers today without legal immigration status. If we divide $300 billion by 30 million and then by 10 years we get $1,000/year paid by each enricher into a welfare state where each dependent family costs nearly $100,000 per year (some data in pre-Biden dollars). A different study in the same article works out to about $2,000/year paid per undocumented migrant:
Before the agreement between the I.R.S. and ICE, unauthorized immigrants paid roughly $60 billion annually in federal taxes, according to an estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank. Much of it went to Social Security and Medicare, which are programs that undocumented immigrants cannot benefit from.
(I think the last sentence is factually incorrect, despite the NYT’s claims of checking facts. As soon as an undocumented immigrant’s anchor baby turns 21, the undocumented migrant is immediately eligible for a green card and, thus, immediately eligible to receive Social Security and Medicare.)
The New York Times repeats the absurd statistic that the number of undocumented migrants in the U.S. has barely grown over the past 30 years, even during the Biden-Harris administration’s open border period (see the Yale study: “There’s a number that everybody quotes”):
About 14 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States in 2023, the latest available estimate, and about 70 percent of them were in the labor force, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Department of Undocumented Migrants Aren’t Getting Welfare:
But last year’s Republican tax law cut off the child tax credit, which had been available to families if a child was a U.S. citizen.
(A cash handout from federal taxpayers (“the chumps”) isn’t “welfare”, apparently.)
The child tax credit by itself is $2,200, $1,700 of which is “refundable” (i.e., if you don’t owe any tax because you don’t work or have a low income then you get $1,700 anyway). So the child tax credit alone is larger than even the largest estimate of taxes paid per undocumented migrant.
Meanwhile because there was a “flood” WA tax deadline is postponed. I procrastinated, and now can procrastinate even more!
The new “New Math” and the New Logic, kinda makes one’s head spin. The Missouri legislature is trying to emulate Florida and Wyoming by eliminating state income tax. Unlike Florida, they don’t have the outsized tourism revenue (or fossil fuel like Wyoming) and are intending on sales and use taxes to replace the revenue. At least the immigrants can prop them up by buying stuff at Wal*Mart made in China? [Apologies, my New Logic is fuzzy.]
Passed in a midnight session as a change to their constitution, put to the voters in November. Cross that one off for retirement if it goes through. I mean, I <3 pachyderms and everything, but WTF?
“As soon as an undocumented immigrant’s anchor baby turns 18, the undocumented migrant is immediately eligible for a green card”
Only if the undocumented immigrant entered the US with a visa.
ChatGPT:
Entered without inspection (illegally):
They often cannot adjust status inside the U.S.
They may have to leave the country for consular processing
Leaving can trigger 3- or 10-year reentry bars
Waivers exist, but are not guaranteed
Anon: if the undocumented migrant parent is in the U.S. without documentation, what stops him or her from walking out to Tijuana via the border near San Diego? From there, he or she can board a flight to Mexico City and walk into the U.S. consulate. If the U.S. never knows that someone has left how can the U.S. impose a reentry bar?
Leaving the U.S. quietly doesn’t erase unlawful presence. And when you later apply at a consulate, you have to disclose your history under oath. If you lie (a felony?), you risk a permanent ban. So the “just walk to Mexico and come back legally” idea doesn’t work in practice. What is the immigrant going to say when asked “where have you been the past 18 years?”
Anon: What’s wrong with “mostly here in Mexico” as an answer if the parent is a Mexican national? Wouldn’t that be the default assumpion?
ChatGPT says that I’m somewhat wrong and that the age is 21, not 18 (I’ll correct that above). Also that a huge class of undocumented migrants are, in fact, eligible without a brief trip home: “If the parent entered legally (e.g., with a visa) but overstayed … They often can adjust status in the U.S. once the child is 21, even if they overstayed.”
Hi Phil, this is one topic you never get tired of. May I suggest you start being the change you wish to see in the world?
The next time you need an Uber, keep cancelling until you get a native-born driver. Or if you find yourself at a Dunkin staffed only by Muslims then find another one there are plenty to go around. Only hire white contractors who do not have Hispanic workers.
I am serious. Otherwise admit that you are the same as the “righteous”. Pleading for higher taxes or less carbon emissions, but for other people. Or in this case, claiming undocumented harm US workers but still taking advantage of them.
Anon: People of all political persuasions, I think, agree that the 1965 Hart-Cellar opening of our borders is the most significant transformation of the U.S. during the lifetimes of almost anyone alive today. (Of course, people disagree on whether the transformation has been a net positive or a net negative.)
The all-Democrat Pew nerds, for example, in
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2026/03/25/the-united-states-at-250-how-the-country-has-changed-in-the-past-50-years/ :
… following more than 70 million immigrant arrivals [in the past 50 years], the percentage of foreign-born people in the population has more than tripled.
—————
Important more humans than the entire population of France has to be at least worth discussion, no?
I think most people don’t consider the typical “life cycle” of many undocumented immigrants (those who work). They arrive, they work, they make money, and they are better off; their employers are better off as well. They never obtain a path to legal residence, and eventually they return to their home countries. Everybody wins. The end.
Some will argue that they depress the wages of native workers. Those who believe that “native workers” are somehow displaced by undocumented immigrants have probably never tried to hire workers for the jobs that most undocumented immigrants do.
Anon: Your question has been examined by Harvard economists. It is not an “Everybody wins” situation even for the subset of migrants who are of working age and actually work (remember that some come here at age 0 or 1, some may come via green card at 70, and some are “single moms” with multiple under-18 children). People who own apartment buildings win (receive higher rents; pay lower wages). Native-born Americans who rent apartments lose (pay higher rents; receive lower wages). Rich people who collect dividends from S&P 500 holdings win. Working class Americans who own no stocks lose. Back in 2016 it was a $500 billion ANNUAL transfer of weatlh from the working class to the elite (that’s in pre-Biden dollars): https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216/
(Our family is a significant economic winner. Our $120,000 re-roof would have likely cost $200,000+ if not for the fact that migrants depressed wages for people who work on hot roofs in the Florida sun. And we were more easily able to afford the $120,000 because of the robust performance of the S&P 500 (goes up as the U.S. population goes up, basically, even if population growth is accomplished via low-skill immigration). Our HOA fee would be much higher if not for immigrants depressing wages for landscapers. In fact, if not for open borders our development might not exist in its present form. It would look more like American suburbia in the 1950s where yards were sufficiently simple to be maintained by the homeowners on weekends, maybe with a high school kid paid to cut the lawn. The kind of landscape that we have would still exist, but in botanical gardens or the back yards of mansions.)
“Those who believe that “native workers” are somehow displaced by undocumented immigrants have probably never tried to hire workers for the jobs that most undocumented immigrants do.”
Raise the wage.
Workin’: I’m native-born and would be happy to clean houses at $100/hr.! At my current level of fitness, it isn’t bad exercise.
I got curious about Verea (the Spanish tile company mentioned) and watched the promotional video on their website. I don’t see a single worker touching anything. Could it be that the competing American company workers have had their wages depressed by foreign robots?
https://vereaclaytile.com/about/
@Anonymous,
> The next time you need an Uber, keep cancelling until …
The next time you walk into an ER, ask why the wait is so long or why your bill is so high. It is because illegal migrants taking your spot and you are paying their bills.
The next time you attend a parent-teacher meeting, ask why your child may be falling behind or why the classroom feels overcrowded. It is because the schools have to accommodate illegal migrant kids needs and increase class size per teacher.
I could go on, but my point is this. If anything, they place additional strain on already limited resources.
Philip, not sure that your roof would be more expensive if it were done by legal immigrants or even native-born Americans. Legal immigrant acquaintance competed for temporary manual – labor positions in the field mostly staffed with illegals. He had to settle for less pay despite his extensive mechanical and handy man experience to be competitive. Illegal or undocumented workers work in groups and make market nontransparent, their promoters or whoever either bribe or threaten work foremen to bring less-productive crews of illegal workers who command higher pay. Not sure whether they get all of it or had to pay off the bosses, but this is the fact. Otherwise why would the choose crossing the border vs working for a Ford assembly plant in Mexico?
perplexed: It’s Econ 101. An increase in supply leads to a fall in the market-clearing price for all suppliers. That’s true for labor as well as for widgets. In the case of labor, the existence of undocumented migrants depresses wages for same-trade legal immigrants, whose presence here depresses wages for native-born Americans in the same trade. An independent process will result in higher wages for the most productive roofing workers, regardless of immigration status.
Same with typos corrected.
Philip, government can set prices. So shadowy governments, i.e. monopolists, the mob or cartels can set the price as well, especially when price is already artificially hiked by HOAs and other regulations. Gives them a leeway. It is widely known that when large institutional investors, i.e. some of the big banks, invest into manufacturing, for example soda can manufacturing, they trend to optimize, i.e. hike, the price of the product. Of course it results in misprinting that hurts consumer at large, and it is definitely is the case in anything real-estate related.
Employment of said illegal workers (meaning illegal border crossers, I do not think that anything work-related is illegal in itself, unless employers break actual laws) is definitely fixed by cartels/mob/whoever helped them cross the border.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xRSJJXdyfMY
Anon: Thanks for that. The Nobel laureate economist never imagined that some of his assumptions would be made false, e.g., that the people he calls “illegal immigrants” (now “undocumented”) actually WOULD qualify for welfare (health care, public housing, etc.).
Your new roof in Florida was also probably made more affordable by foreign workers who never set foot in the former Spanish colony, and who probably have depressed the wages of millions of US citizens. We live in a global economy, and have, in many ways, since Roman times.
Anon: You’re absolutely right. Our new roof was made affordable by workers in northern Spain who made the clay tile for a tiny fraction of the cost of American-made similar-quality tile. Verea vs. Ludowici (Ohio). See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/04/27/re-roofing-a-spanish-style-house-in-florida-concrete-clay-brava-composite-or-stamped-metal/
(Of course, if the Spanish tile hadn’t been available we probably wouldn’t have paid huge $$ for Ohio-made clay tile, but rather would have bought American-made concrete tile (inferior aesthetics, but likely better in a hurricane due to higher weight; it’s what the profit-minded builder put on our house back in 2003). As a practical matter, we couldn’t have used the Ohio-made tile because it wouldn’t have been available on the required timeline. I guess we also have to thank Malcolm McLean for inventing modern container shipping and thus making it far faster to get tile from Spain than to get tile from Ohio and at a much lower shipping cost!)
I got curious about Verea (the Spanish tile company mentioned) and watched the promotional video on their website. I don’t see a single worker touching anything. Could it be that the competing American company workers have had their wages depressed by foreign robots?
https://vereaclaytile.com/about/
Anon, wages “depressed” Philip’s way. here in deploreland I am getting estimates for new metal roofs starting under $10,000, from all native – born American crews.
Perplexed: I guess our roof is complicated because the quote that we got for a metal roof wasn’t much cheaper than for tile. Maybe $110,000 for standing seam metal (rejected, of course, by the HOA despite a state law that is supposed to prevent them from rejecting hurricane-proofing; I threw it in there mostly to keep them from getting too picky about our clay tile color) vs. $120,000 for clay tile. This is kind of a three-level house (ground floor, smaller second floor, weird little turret that sticks up above the second floor).
(The tactic worked! The HOA rejected the metal roof, but said we could use any of the tile colors that we’d picked!)
Phil: you are strawmanning my point.
I’m not arguing whether the Hart-Celler Act is consequential or not and whether it merits discussion. I am saying if you are so against “low” skilled immigration and to the defense of the native born you should at least try to do the following:
– Pay $200,000+ to a native-born contractor for your roof
– Higher a local high school kid as your landscaper and pay him the above market rate he would’ve received before 1965 (adjust for the extra work due to the house size)
– Sell at least some of your stock so at least you stop profiting from the millions of immigrants and put a dent in the $500 billion transfer of wealth
Or categorically admit you are on the same moral level as the “righteous” who pleas for higher taxes — on other people. You claim to be looking out for the working class but you’re partaking in taking their wealth.
The original post isn’t about the overall merits of open borders. Someone who wants to live in the Dar al-Islam, for example, could seek to increase the number of immigrants from Afghanistan and Somalia on non-economic grounds. The post is about those who advocate for open borders on the ground that low-skill migrants make Americans better off economically. https://x.com/CatoInstitute/status/2045125660893454518?s=20 is an example. Cato Institute talks about how immigrants pay dramaticaly more in taxes than native-born Americans. They didn’t stop to question why no other country anywhere in the world will pay us even $1 to send them migrants whom we are deporting. They don’t ask why no other country sets up offices in Somalia, Haiti, Venezuela, or Afghanistan trying to encourage people there to migrant. If Cato’s conclusions about the huge fiscal benefits are correct, why aren’t immigrants being actively sought by European nations? Can every European nation be irrationally racist? There is also the fiscal position of the U.S. to consider. We’re told that immigrants are huge fiscal positives for our massive welfare state. If true, why has debt-to-GDP grown rather than shrunk since the 1965 border opening? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Separately, your ideas aren’t workable. If I had hired a roofing contractor with 100% native-born workers the contractor would have paid wages determined by the existence of all of the immigrants who’ve come across the border since 1965 and the children of those immigrants. Econ 101 says that a shift in the supply curve affects the market-clearing wage for everyone in the market. The working class Americans who voted for Trump understand this.
It’s the same situation with landscaping contractors. If I were put in charge of the HOA(!) and elected to hire your hypothetical high school kid as the landscaping contractor, he would turn around and hire the required crew of 20 landscapers are market-clearing wages that are set partly due to the existence of migrants and their children in the labor supply.
If I were to sell my S&P 500 shares and buy stock in countries that don’t allow low-skill immigration, e.g., Japan, Taiwan, China, Poland, Estonia, Hungary, the expected result would be the same return on investment (if it were not, stocks in those immigration-rejecting nations would fall). Maybe my purchase of stocks in Japan would push up the values there ever so slightly and cause some Japanese investors to buy the S&P 500. The person who buys Japanese stocks right now is necessarily benefitting from the expected returns on the S&P 500, including the returns expected from migrants coming into the U.S. and being in the U.S., because the price of the Japanese stock reflects the attractiveness of the S&P 500 as an alternative.
These are just illustrations of why the most consequential decisions that a U.S. president can make are those that affect immigration. When you let 30 million undocumented migrants into the U.S., the effect of their immigration can never be undone from the U.S. economy and U.S. society.
Speaking of the non-financial merits of open borders, from the latest Lionel Shriver novel. A migrant from Honduras asks the 27-year-old son in her NYC host family (“Big Apple; Big Heart” program) why he is anti-migrant.
“The ‘big feeling’ has to do with home. Home isn’t only a place; home is a big feeling. That you belong. That you can understand the people around you, and they can understand you, because you’re mostly the same.” Nico was struggling for a definition that didn’t stray into the tar pit of race. He resorted to Google’s conversation mode. “It’s about feeling comfortable and welcome and not having to try very hard. It’s a place where people laugh at your jokes, and you laugh at their jokes. You can sing some of the same songs. You watch some of the same TV programs. You know you can trust most people, and you know how to recognize the people you can’t trust. When your home fills up with people from somewhere else. Who speak different languages so you can’t understand each other. Who think different things. Who have no deep connection to your home, no ‘big feelings’ for your home. No history there. Who often . . .” Here he hesitated; this was awkward face-to-face, but he remembered Palermo’s unflattering characterization of her brother as only braving negative sentiments about people behind their backs. “Who often come to your home to take advantage, to see how much they can take. Well, then your home doesn’t seem like a home anymore. It seems like anywhere. It makes you sad.”
> Phil: you are strawmanning my point.
You must be new here. In fact, if you zoom far enough out, the Internet looks like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarecrow_(Oz)
a giant web of fallacious discourse. Strawman him back, dude/dudette/dudex.