Undocumented Mableton Resident: We Do Pay Taxes
Dulce Guerrero, an undocumented resident activist living in Mableton and Jesus Cruz, another undocumented Mableton resident, say they and their families do pay taxes.
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Dulce Guerrero said she and her family do pay taxes. She and her family are undocumented residents currently living in Mableton.
She said her family pays taxes through the Internal Revenue Service and each have Individual Tax Identification Numbers.
She said in a Business Insider article it's "a complete lie" that undocumented residents, or illegal immigrants, do not pay taxes. It's often an argument espoused by those who are opposed to undocumented residents, who are called a drain on taxpayers and the government system because they are supposedly receiving these services for free.
"We have a government issued tax ID number. So the government knows very well who we are. They know very well where we live and they have all of our information. I am sure if they ever wanted to pick us up, since they have our tax ID number, they have our information. We pay taxes just like everyone else," Guerrero told BI.
IRS representative Patricia Kirk told Fox News that the internal revenue code doesn't differentiate between legal and illegal residents.
According to BI, the IRS has issued ITINs to immigrants without Social Security Numbers since 1996 and illegal immigrants have brought in $50 billion in taxes from 1996 to 2003.
The Taxation and Economic Policy calculated that illegal immigrants paid $11.2 billion in taxes in 2010.
Charles Klughart
8:56 am on Monday, June 11, 2012
If a drug dealer would pay taxes on his illegal drug sales it does no make his illegal activities legal. Illegal ( breaking he laws of our city, state or country) is still illegal. One can call it pretty words ( undocumented) but the true word is illegal alien,
If I broke into my neighbors house and just started living there, I am not a resident of the house, I am not a tenant. I am in the house illegally, I am not a undocumented renter.
Lets call things they way they are. If they want all the benefits, let them leave the country make proper visa application and come back.
Randy Smyrna realist
9:32 am on Monday, June 11, 2012
Drug dealers pay taxes. Just ask IRS. They do not discriminate between drug dealers and non drug dealers. Sales taxes, real estate taxes, some even have real jobs and pay income tax and social security tax....silly me ... Social security is a contribution..
Pam J
9:46 am on Monday, June 11, 2012
If they got the ITIN, they had to lie to get it. I worked with foreign investors for years, and the form is very specific about certain things. If they applied for the ITIN while they were here, they had to put a foreign address on it, unless they were here on a work visa. They had to put how many days they spent in the U.S. for each of the last three years (just a certain amount of days they could be here). If they applied for the ITIN while they were in Mexico, fine. But they apparently did not enter this country legally. And the ITIN card does not give you the right to work in this country. It does not give you legal status.
Just A Grunt
10:33 am on Monday, June 11, 2012
Here is the link to the actual form to fill out for an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw7.pdf
Here are the categories eligible.
1) Nonresident alien required to get ITIN to claim tax treaty benefit
2) Nonresident alien filing a US tax return
3) US resident alien (based on days present in the United States) filing a US tax return
4) Dependent of US citizen/resident alien
5) Spouse of US citizen/resident alien
6) Non-resident alien student, professor, or researcher filing a US tax return or claiming an exception
7) Dependent/spouse of resident alien holding a US visa
8) Other
If checking other you must supply supporting documentation such as passport, drivers license or other immigration documents as well as provide date of entry into the United States. The last thing you do is read the statement warning of perjury for making false statements and then signing.
So my question is do these illegal aliens with ITINs file tax returns? If not then they have violated yet another law. Having an ITIN does not make you any more legal. It says so right at the top of the form.
Kiri Walton
12:09 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012
From what I have been told to the undocumented residents I talked to here in South Cobb, they do file tax returns, but do not receive any of their refunds.
David
2:52 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012
Kiri, according to IRS figures fewer than a third of ITIN filers pay taxes. the rest either get a full refund or like last year 2.3 million got far more than they paid in using the child tax credit. That means 2/3 of the people you talked to are liars.
Kiri Walton
3:42 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012
Hey David, thanks for commenting. Please shoot me a link to those figures. Also, if those figures are correct, it doesn't mean that the people I spoke to are liars. For example, if there's a stat that says 2 out of 3 people in America are Christians, and I talked to five people who are atheists, it doesn't mean those five people are liars and are actually Christians. That's not how statistics work.
cooky
7:56 am on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
ITIN filers are getting tax refund. And this is true because I for one applied ITIN for my my husband and child when we came here on a working visa. I was eligible for SSN but not them. So to be able to file for tax and get refund, they had to have some kind of a number. The university person handling my immigration papers told me that IRS and USCIS never talk to each other about the statuses of the filers. So, In IRS point of view, our statuses were "residents" already at that time. HOwever, for USCIS, we were still "non-resident immigrants". During that time, we were able to get tax credits and refunds despite my dependents having ITIN. It is true, Kiri, the person that you talked with, LIED to you. They file taxes to get refunds esp employment tax credits. I paid govt fees and waited 10 years to get my citizenship THE LEGAL WAY. Why would I have sympathies to people who just jumped over the fence?
Pam J
11:41 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
cooky, you get an ITIN if you are a "non-resident alien". So if you actually live here, you can't get an ITIN. You can only spend a certain amount of time in this country each year. You cannot live here.
Pam J
7:03 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012
Kiri (and everybody else), this is not about filing tax returns or anything else. It is about people being in this country illegally. We can talk circles around it and quote statistics and such, but it does not change the fact that these people came into this country illegally. It really is a slap in the face to the people who took the legal route to get here.
Kiri Walton
7:16 pm on Monday, June 11, 2012
Since this is directed to me, I am just responding to say that I reported a story about illegal immigrants saying they pay taxes, nothing else.
cooky
6:54 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Pam, I was able to get an ITIN for my husband and child when we were on work visa. You are right, we were "non-resident alien". I was on H-1B (work visa) for 6 years which makes me eligible for a SSN. However, having SSN will only let me have the job that is stated on my work visa, I cannot have a second job, nor a part time job. For my husband and child, they were on H4 (dependent of H-1B holders). they are not eligible to work, therefore, for tax purposes, they have to have a certain ID #. that's where the ITIN came in. The university staff told me to get one for my husband and child (btw, he was a former INS officer before coming to our university international office). You are right, since we were on H visa we are not considered" living here" permanently. we were on "temporary visa". but my husband and child hold that ITIN for the whole time we were on H visa (6 years). Now when we got our greencard (permanent residents, living here permanently), they have become eligible for SSN.
Albert
3:35 am on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Why don't we direct harsh words an language towards the business owners and farmers that employ and attract these families accross the border. This is a capitalizism issue. This is a supply and demand issue. The same people that are blaming and chastizing the mexican immagrents are the same ones hiring and exploiting their services thru their dreams and hopes to live the American dream.
Poor people and families have never ruled the world. Only wealthy people & greedy businessmen. So turn this anger & hate away from the poor immagrents that's just trying make a better life for their kids and start focusing your efforts on the real culprits of this problem.
Pam J
3:04 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Albert, you are correct. We should be targeting the people who hire the illegal immigrants. There are apparently a lot of them since there appears to be plenty of illegals in this area. Go into any convenience store on a Friday afternoon and they are in there buying a lot of lottery tickets. Most of them may be here legally, but I can't afford to buy lottery tickets because I can't find a job. Just the fact that a good old American citizen can't find a job and someone who is even here on a work visa can is wrong.
cooky
4:04 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Pam I came here on a work visa and I don't think I displaced an american citizen looking for the same job as I had. These positions on a work visa has to be labor certified and went through a long process of labor conditions (advertized for lengthy time) to make sure that no american citizen was deprived of that job during the posting. if there is a single american citizen who applied and qualified for the job, there would not be work visa issued to the alien.
Pam J
11:38 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
cooky, so you don't think you got a job that an American citizen could have gotten? I worked for a company where a friend of mine applied to (she was more than qualified) and they gave the job to another employee's friend who came over on a work visa. I applied for a job recently where a former coworker is now, and he told me that they hired someone from Germany who was here on a work visa. So I pretty much base my opinion on that. In this current job market, do not, for one second, believe that there are many jobs that an American citizen would not take if it was offered. I never thought I would actually apply for (and probably accept) a minimum wage job, considering I was making $23/hour before. And I am not alone.
cooky
7:22 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Pam, I totally agree with you. It is impossible not to have a qualified american citizen for ANY job here. However, in my case, when I applied for a job that sponsored me for a work visa, my boss told me that he was looking for a lab person for over a year and nobody wanted that job. when i came to his lab, there was no american citizen at all, all asians. Somehow, working in a university lab in a small texas town is not very attractive to the locals. You can still see this workforce compostion in any well established research lab. they are mostly asians. in fact in my current lab (unversity based), we posted for 2 (well trained, with more than 5 papers published) post doc cell biology researchers for over 2 years but nobody fits our requirements or if anybody has this requirement, they do not want to work in a minority university that will surely give them less money, so we had to look for somebody outside the country who is able and willing to work in less favorable condition. HOWEVER, we chose to enter and work for this country the LEGAL way.
Pam J
11:14 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
cooky, when did all of this take place? If it was several years ago, I understand. But now people are desperate. I applied for a 15-hour-a-week job making about minimum wage. If I am offered the job, I will take it and be the best and happiest employee they have. At the beginning of my job search 2-1/2 years ago, I would not take anything less than full time, making close to what I was making. Unfortunately I have not been offered anything, nor have I had one single interview. I find it hard to believe that just about every job posting out there today does not have a lot of people applying for it. I know that I've been told that for a couple of jobs I applied for, they received more than 300 resumes (they stopped counting). Times are tough right now. America needs to focus on it's citizens. That is the only way this country is going to be fixed.
Logan K
11:35 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Cooky's story about the lab is pretty common, even in this recession. Not enough US citizens are graduating in the STEM fields. There simply are not enough qualified US citizens for many of these lab jobs. Many Asian applicants are much more qualified, and they should get those jobs before less-qualified US citizens. And perhaps those Asians in those labs WERE US citizens. Let's not be too ethnocentric now...
Logan K
10:32 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
There are NOT US citizen workers who are willing to pick crops in the heat for 12 hours a day for $2 an hour. I guarantee it. These undocumented Americans are the most hardworking people in this country, and I am inspired by their children who, against all odds, strive to be successful and give back.
Pam J
11:17 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
I guess I'm not sure what you are trying to say. If you are talking about illegal aliens being undocumented AMERICANS, you got it all wrong. It doesn't matter how hard they work, they came into this country illegally. And the kid at Pebblebrook that has been written about wants to become an attorney to help other immigrants. That is not, in my opinion, giving back to America.
Logan K
11:31 pm on Wednesday, June 13, 2012
These students are Americans, Pam. Many of them have been here for close to their entire lives. Some of them don't even read/write the language of their country of origin. You would never know they were undocumented when you met them. They have completely integrated into US society and have a lot to offer. They are, in many ways, more American than native-born citizens, and they certainly are more engaged with civic activities than most.
Have you ever interacted with the undocumented community? If you had, you would realize how much these people have to offer our nation and how inspiring these students are.
I think it's great he wants to become an immigration attorney. He can help other people pursue their American Dream--hopefully in a modified system that makes the process for legal immigration easier. America is an immigrant nation. Immigration is what makes this country strong and unique--it's our core. Helping struggling people caught up in a flawed system is a great way to give back to America. Give back to America by helping individuals seeking to make America a better place.
Pam J
11:03 am on Thursday, June 14, 2012
They are not Americans until they have the papers showing that they are. And, yes, I know that this country was built on immigrants, but that was 100 or 200 years ago. Things are a whole lot different now. We have laws and there are millions of people breaking those laws. Let me ask you this - would you enter another country illegally? Would you expect that country to embrace you and offer you all sorts of things? I have posted this question to all of you defending the illegals and not one of you has answered me.
Logan K
12:11 pm on Thursday, June 14, 2012
These students consider themselves to be Americans, as all they have known is America. If I had grown up in Britain since age 2, I'd consider myself to be pretty British...
Immigrants are STILL building this country. More than 200 of the Fortune 500 companies (including Google, General Electric, Proctor and Gamble, Home Depot, UPS, and Boeing) were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
If my family was 50 miles away and it was going to take me 25 years to legally enter that country, I would certainly enter it illegally. The issue here is our broken immigration system-not the immigrants themselves. The fact of the matter is there is nearly no country on the planet that it would take me 25 years to immigrate to.
And these students don't expect the US to offer them all sorts of things--only respect and tolerance. These immigrants DO pay taxes (not all of them pay income tax, I will admit... but they wouldn't anyway with the sub-poverty wages they receive). Undocumented immigrants do not benefit from any entitlement programs (they aren't eligible, of course). All these students are asking for as an opportunity to go to college and give back to this country in some manner. That "opportunity" in Georgia means giving them the great honor of paying out of state tuition to attend our public universities. But this backward state doesn't even let them do that...
Pam J
1:36 pm on Thursday, June 14, 2012
We choose to disagree. No point in discussing it any further. But just hope that you don't lose a job or are refused a job because the employer decides to hire a non-U.S. citizen.
Logan K
1:39 pm on Thursday, June 14, 2012
I encourage you to see the cover story of this week's TIME Magazine: http://ideas.time.com/2012/06/14/inside-the-world-of-the-illegal-immigrant/
Pam J
4:41 pm on Thursday, June 14, 2012
I read the article and it does not change my mind. I feel sorry for the children that were brought here by their parents, but what happened to the parents when the child grew up? Are they still here? Did they leave the kids? I am a 59-year-old white female with no kids. I have been unemployed for 2-1/2 years now. No money coming in, foreclosed house, defaulted credit cards, owe the IRS and the State of Georgia, and living with my mother since my father passed away in March. I cannot, repeat, cannot get any kind of public assistance of any kind. I cannot get free healthcare, food stamps, or anything else. I am sorry I cannot feel sorry for these people who are apparently doing better than I am financially. At my last job, there were three people who had moved here from different countries (England, Germany, and China). They all came here legally. Apparently it's not hard to do. And, once again, if you moved to, say, Egypt, where the unemployment rate is really high, would you feel right taking a job from one of them? I wouldn't.