My Country, My Taxes

Alan Jenkins

April 24, 2007

Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and advocacy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity in America.

Last week, as Americans filed their taxes, the press was full of stories about the upsurge in numbers of undocumented immigrants filing taxes this year. Undocumented immigrants have historically contributed billions of dollars in federal, state, and local taxes annually, but their contribution will reportedly be much higher this year.

Some anti-immigration groups said last week that the IRS shouldn’t take these immigrants’ money; that these new taxpayers paid up only because most versions of immigration reform being considered on Capitol Hill include payment of taxes as a benchmark along an earned path to citizenship.

The critics are half right. Millions of vulnerable, mostly low-income people overcame fear of engaging the government, language barriers and financial strains to pay taxes that no one knew they owed, all because they desperately want to be full members of our society. They’re paying taxes “only” because they love this country and want to be Americans.

It makes no sense to turn these folks (or their money) away. Their reason for paying taxes is the reason that many of us pay taxes: not because we fear prosecution, but because taxes are a way of paying our fair share toward a country that gives us so much. Taxes, and the public systems that they help to support, are among the ways in which we are in it together as a nation of diverse people.

Sure, many of us hoped for a refund last week, as I’m sure many undocumented immigrant filers did. But we also know that a refund can’t buy an improved public school system for our kids. It can’t buy a public health system that vaccinates them and their classmates against childhood illnesses, or that detects the spread of disease before it becomes an epidemic. Nor will a refund build the things that we desperately need, but do not yet have, in our country—quality health care for everyone who lives here, a fortified Social Security system for future generations, a balanced federal budget, access to college for every student who can do the work.

Like almost every taxpayer, I disagree with many of the ways that our country’s leaders spend my money. But my disagreements with particular policies are inextricably linked with the larger American experience of which I’m a part: the chance to vote, debate, protest and work for positive change.

Similarly, undocumented immigrants are paying taxes for the relationship they have with this country, and for the relationship they hope to have one day. “I feel it’s my responsibility to pay,” Ecuadorian immigrant Dionicio Quinde Lima told the New York Times . “And if it helps me get papers, fine. The most important would be a permit to travel back and forth to see my family.”

Instead of finding reasons to keep people from paying their taxes, we should be finding ways to create a tax system that reflects our nation’s values; a system in which everyone pays his or her fair share, and no one shoulders an unfair burden. That means, for example, scaling back the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which increasingly burdens stressed middle classed taxpayers. The AMT should be returned to its original purpose of ensuring that wealthy Americans pay their fair share, notwithstanding the array of tax shelters and loopholes at their disposal. It means returning taxes on the richest 3 percent of Americans—those earning more than $200,000 a year—to the slightly higher rates that applied in the 1990s. And tax breaks on capital gains should be treated the same as other tax breaks under the AMT, so that multimillionaires have the same obligations as working families.

There’s no question that we should accept the taxes contributed by undocumented immigrants. And we should ensure that comprehensive immigration reform, when it comes, includes enforcement mechanisms as well as incentives for employers to move under-the-table payments onto the books. That’s likely to increase wages for all workers, as well as increasing tax revenues that make our society work.