Research shows that immigrant households paid nearly one in every six tax dollars collected in the U.S. in 2022.
Analysis of 2022 U.S. census data from the American Immigration Council released in June shows that immigrant households paid $579.1 billion in total taxes, as well as another $35.1 billion by undocumented households.
The states where immigrants paid the most tax included California at $151.3 billion, New York at $68.1 billion, Texas at $53.1 billion, Florida at $43.5 billion, Illinois at 24.3 billion, and Washington at $20.2 billion.
This doesn’t exactly correlate to the number of immigrants living in each state, although the top four are where immigrants were overall most likely to live in 2022, according to Pew Research data. In California in 2022, the number of immigrants was 10,415,359, while in New York there were 4,484,487. In Texas, there were 5,155,149 immigrants living in the state, in Florida there were 4,808,969, in Illinois there were 1,793,740 and in Washington there were 1,188,357.
Almost one in seven people in the U.S. were immigrants as of 2022, and Iowa had the highest growth rate in immigration population between 2021 to 2022 at 17.6 per cent.
The map below shows the amount of immigration tax paid per state, alongside the number of immigrants living in each state.
The research report explained that immigrants also paid $194.5 billion to Social Security, which helps to provide an average of $1,777 of monthly benefits to 109.5 million people. The report added, “Immigrants are playing a key role in keeping Medicaid and Social Security afloat.”
Nan Wu, research director at the American Immigration Council, told Newsweek, “Given the critical roles that immigrants play in the U.S. economy, federal policies to increase legal immigration pathways and work authorization and state policies to boost access to professional and occupational licenses will not only have a profound impact on unleashing immigrants’ potential, but also significantly contribute to easing the labor shortage experienced by several key industries in the country.”
The American Immigration Council’s report also detailed that over a quarter of workers in the U.S. agriculture industry are immigrants, while one in four in the country’s construction industry are immigrants, and 23.1 percent of STEM workers in the U.S. are immigrants as well.
Wu said the the U.S. immigration system is dealing with backlogs that need to be addressed through a “major shift” in policy, to “rebuild a modern and functional immigration system.”
The report said, “Amid a nationwide shortage of healthcare professionals, immigrants help fill the much-needed jobs in this sector — 15.6 percent of all nurses and 27.7 percent of all health aides are immigrants, according to the most recent data from 2022. In New York and New Jersey, over half of all health aides are foreign-born.”
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