This story was reported and written by Radio IQ.
A new report from a left-leaning tax group says undocumented immigrants add nearly $700 million to Virginia’s economy. The numbers are disputed by some, but the report shows even higher numbers if those individuals are granted legal status.
Rodrigo Soto isn’t just part of the Commonwealth Institute’s legislative team, he’s also a formerly undocumented immigrant.
“I was the victim of a crime, so I was eligible for a U Visa,” he told Radio IQ.
That made him all too familiar with the impact folks like him made on the economy.
“Might be a grocery store owner down the block that you go to on the weekends. Might be the person that you worship with at church on Sundays," Soto said. "It might be the person that drops off their kid at the school line.”
And according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, those undocumented people and the taxes they pay add up. Nationally, the report says it’s about $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022 alone. For Virginia, that number is close to $700 million.
But Derek Max at the right-leaning Thomas Jefferson Institute says numbers in reports like this can be bent to serve a group’s needs. And while he agrees that there is an increase in tax revenue from the undocumented, he said there’s a cost as well.
“There’s a million services they take advantage of; schooling being obviously a major one,” Max said in an interview Tuesday.
Still, Max aligns himself more with the Ronald Regan-era of immigration, welcoming more folks to work legally.
“If Mexico were to send a million computers to the United States, would we turn them back," Max opined. "No, we would say ‘Hey, let’s use those computers.’”
The report also found that tax contributions from undocumented people in Virginia would jump to more than $850 million if they were granted legal status. And nationally? Nearly $140 billion.
