[mikeyouse]

> In other words, they contribute labor to the economy, but largely freeload when it comes to any government-provided benefits.

What government-provided benefits? Surely our largest two entitlements are social security and medicare, right? Illegal immigrants don't qualify for either of those. Importantly, many businesses use fake SSN's when hiring illegals, so often times they actually are paying FICA taxes -- with 0 hope to collect.

Public schools? Schools are largely funded via property taxes and sales taxes, both of which illegal immigrants pay at rates probably greater than the average American pays.

Income tax? They are some of the lowest paid people in the country, if they were suddenly legal, they'd likely be owed income taxes via the EITC or other mechanisms.

Emergency Care? Indigent care is expensive, but some state-level medicare programs are allowing illegal immigrants to actually pay for their care.

The entire 'freeload' argument is easily dismantled if you consider the actual facts for more than a few seconds.

[calbear81]

I generally agree that the visible benefits are not available to undocumented immigrants but you're forgetting about the unseen things that taxes support. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr once remarked "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society..".

Taxes pay for civil infrastructure, a somewhat-functioning democratic government, our National Parks, and of course our armed forces. We don't often think about these things since they're not as visible but our ability to sit here in the relative safety of our homes/workplaces exercising our 1st Amendment rights is in a large part supported by the taxes we pay.

[mikeyouse]

Say you're an illegal immigrant working for a factory in Texas. Here's a list of your state tax burden:

http://www.itepnet.org/wp2009/tx_whopays_factsheet.pdf

Illegal immigrants are surely in the lowest 20% bucket. What taxes don't they pay? They rent homes, so they pay property taxes. Their money is spent on clothes and food, so they pay sales taxes. The income taxes that they might not pay are an absolutely minuscule portion of their burden -- literally $11/year on average.

Ever since the I-9's existence, most employers use fake social security numbers for their illegal immigrants. So FICA taxes are removed from their paychecks -- and they'll never get them back in the form of Medicare or Social Security. (Don't take my word for it, here's NYT reporting on SSA's "Earnings Suspense File": http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.htm...)

Smarter people than myself have looked at this, here's a good example: http://www.itep.org/pdf/undocumentedtaxes.pdf -- Tl;Dr: Illegal immigrants pay a lot of taxes, probably pretty close to the amount they would pay if they were legalized. However, they get far less benefit from their taxes since they don't qualify for most programs.