Do Illegal Immigrants Cost Taxpayers More Than They Pay? The Facts About Taxes, Welfare and the Real Cost of Unauthorized Immigration

The claim that undocumented immigrants come to the United States, pay little or nothing into the system, and then broadly live on SNAP, Medicaid, Social Security and other federal welfare programs is false as stated.

Federal SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented noncitizens. Unauthorized immigrants are generally ineligible for TANF cash assistance, Supplemental Security Income, ordinary federally funded Medicaid, Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage and most federal housing assistance. They can receive limited emergency Medicaid if they otherwise satisfy Medicaid requirements, and some states separately use state money to provide health coverage or other services regardless of immigration status. U.S.-citizen children in mixed-status families can also receive benefits for which those children are independently eligible. (FNA)

At the same time, undocumented immigrants pay federal, state and local taxes. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s latest detailed national estimate concluded that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, including $59.4 billion to the federal government and $37.3 billion to state and local governments. Of that amount, an estimated $25.7 billion went to Social Security, $6.4 billion to Medicare and $1.8 billion to unemployment insurance. (ITEP)

But the opposite slogan—“illegal immigration costs taxpayers nothing”—does not survive scrutiny either.

Unauthorized immigrants use roads, schools, emergency rooms, courts, police departments and other public infrastructure. Children who are themselves undocumented have a constitutional right to attend public K–12 schools. Citizen children of undocumented parents use public services just like other American citizens. Emergency health care has a cost. Immigration enforcement has a cost. Some states voluntarily provide additional benefits with their own money. (U.S. Department of Education)

The more accurate conclusion is therefore considerably less useful to political propagandists on either side:

Unauthorized immigrants are substantial taxpayers who are excluded from many of the federal programs they are routinely accused of draining. They also generate genuine public expenditures, particularly at the state and local level. Whether someone produces a positive or negative “net cost” often depends as much on the accounting rules being chosen as on the underlying population itself.

That distinction matters.

First, what population are we actually talking about?

Even the phrase “illegal immigrant” conceals a more complicated population than political rhetoric normally suggests.

Some people crossed the border without authorization. Others entered the United States legally and subsequently overstayed a visa. Some have pending asylum claims, parole or other temporary protections but lack permanent legal status. Researchers therefore often use the term “unauthorized immigrant” or “undocumented immigrant” rather than treating every person in the category as having entered the country illegally. (Pew Research Center)

Pew Research Center estimated that the unauthorized immigrant population reached 14 million in 2023, representing about 4.1% of the U.S. population. Pew estimated that 9.7 million unauthorized immigrants were in the workforce, equivalent to 5.6% of all U.S. workers. Pew also cautions that its unauthorized category includes people with several forms of temporary or precarious legal protection, which is one reason population estimates from different organizations cannot simply be substituted for one another. (Pew Research Center)

That last point becomes important when people begin producing enormous dollar figures.

There is no government spreadsheet containing one row for every unauthorized immigrant, their lifetime tax payments and every public service they have ever consumed. Researchers must estimate the population and then model its income, tax behavior, family composition and service usage. Different assumptions can move the final number by tens of billions of dollars.

That does not mean fiscal estimates are worthless.

It means the methodology is part of the answer.

Can undocumented immigrants get SNAP or food stamps?

For federal SNAP, the answer is unusually straightforward:

No. Undocumented noncitizens are not eligible for SNAP.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture states directly that “SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented non-citizens.” Current law has actually become more restrictive toward several classes of legally present noncitizens as well. (FNA)

This does not mean that an undocumented parent cannot live in a household where SNAP is being received.

Imagine an undocumented mother with two children who were born in Texas. Those children are American citizens. If they satisfy the program’s income and other eligibility rules, the children may be entitled to assistance in their own right.

Reporting that household as a “household headed by an illegal immigrant receiving food stamps” may be technically constructed from the household data, but it can create a profoundly misleading impression. The recipient whose eligibility generated the benefit may be an American child.

The immigration status of the parent does not erase the citizenship of the child.

The same mixed-status-family problem appears repeatedly in immigration statistics. HealthCare.gov explicitly recognizes mixed-status households and allows an ineligible family member to apply for coverage on behalf of eligible household members without applying for coverage personally. (HealthCare.gov)

That difference—benefits received by an unauthorized person versus benefits received by an eligible citizen living with an unauthorized person—should be disclosed every time household welfare statistics are used in an immigration argument.

Frequently, it is not.

Can undocumented immigrants receive TANF cash welfare?

Generally, no.

The federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act limits TANF and many other federal public benefits to citizens and qualifying categories of noncitizens. HHS’s current TANF guidance states explicitly that people unlawfully present are not “qualified aliens” and are therefore not eligible for TANF benefits. (Peer TA Network)

Again, an eligible child in a mixed-status family changes the analysis. A payment legally attributable to an eligible citizen child should not simply be relabeled as a cash welfare payment to an undocumented adult.

This is not semantic nitpicking.

It determines what the statistic actually measures.

Can undocumented immigrants receive regular Medicaid?

Not through ordinary federally funded Medicaid solely as undocumented immigrants.

CMS materials state that there is no federal funding for regular Medicaid coverage of undocumented immigrants, with a limited exception allowing payment for treatment of qualifying emergency medical conditions when the person otherwise satisfies Medicaid requirements. (Medicaid)

That emergency exception is real public spending. Pretending otherwise would be just as misleading as pretending undocumented immigrants receive ordinary Medicaid coverage.

There is another important complication: states can spend their own money.

As of April 2026, KFF identified 15 states including Washington, D.C., providing comprehensive state-funded coverage to income-eligible children regardless of immigration status, while seven including D.C. provided some state-funded coverage to adults regardless of status. Several states have recently scaled those programs back because of budget pressures. These are state policy choices rather than ordinary federally funded Medicaid eligibility for undocumented immigrants. (KFF)

So the accurate statement is:

Undocumented immigrants are generally excluded from federally funded full-scope Medicaid, but emergency Medicaid exists and some states voluntarily finance broader coverage themselves.

That is less catchy than either political slogan.

It is also true.

Can undocumented immigrants get Obamacare subsidies?

Undocumented immigrants cannot obtain coverage through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace.

HealthCare.gov states this directly: undocumented immigrants cannot get Marketplace health coverage, although they can submit an application on behalf of documented household members. (HealthCare.gov)

This is another area where “immigrant” and “undocumented immigrant” are routinely collapsed together.

Lawfully present immigrants can qualify for Marketplace coverage and, depending on the applicable rules and their circumstances, financial assistance. That does not mean someone living in the United States without qualifying status has the same eligibility. (HealthCare.gov)

Can undocumented immigrants receive Section 8 or federal housing assistance?

Federal housing assistance is also restricted by immigration status.

HUD states that Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act prohibits federal housing assistance from being provided to people who are neither U.S. citizens nor members of specified eligible noncitizen categories. Mixed-status families can involve more complicated prorated assistance rules, but the presence of an undocumented household member is not the same as that individual being federally subsidized as an eligible recipient. (HUD)

Again, the recurring error is treating a household containing an undocumented immigrant as equivalent to an undocumented immigrant personally receiving the entire household benefit.

Those are different measurements.

What about Social Security?

This is where the fiscal picture becomes especially counterintuitive.

Undocumented workers can have Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes withheld from their earnings even when those earnings will not readily translate into benefits for the worker.

ITEP estimates that undocumented immigrants and their employers generated $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes in 2022. Its estimate includes both employee and employer shares of payroll taxation. (ITEP)

An older but particularly important analysis comes from the Social Security Administration itself. SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary estimated that unauthorized workers and their employers paid approximately $13 billion into Social Security in 2010, while only about $1 billion in benefit payments that year could be attributed to earnings generated during unauthorized work. SSA estimated the resulting positive cash-flow effect at roughly $12 billion for that year. (Social Security Administration)

SSA also explained one mechanism: wages reported under names and Social Security numbers that do not match can end up in the agency’s Earnings Suspense File. Taxes are collected, but the earnings may not be credited to the person for future benefits. (Social Security Administration)

This does not mean no person who once worked without authorization can ever receive Social Security. Immigration status can change, older rules differed, some workers previously possessed legitimate Social Security numbers, and eligibility involves additional legal and insured-status requirements.

But the claim that unauthorized workers simply “take Social Security without paying for it” reverses an important part of the documented relationship.

Historically, SSA itself has found unauthorized employment to be a net positive contributor to Social Security’s cash flow.

How do undocumented immigrants pay taxes without legal status?

Legal immigration status and tax liability are separate concepts.

The IRS issues an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, to people who need a federal taxpayer identification number but are not eligible for a Social Security number. The IRS explicitly states that an ITIN exists for federal tax purposes, does not create immigration status and does not itself authorize employment. (IRS)

But income-tax returns are only one part of the tax system.

A person buying gasoline, clothing, a restaurant meal or other taxable goods pays applicable sales and excise taxes regardless of immigration status.

A renter contributes economically toward property taxes embedded in rent.

Workers in payroll systems can have federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld automatically.

Businesses owned by undocumented immigrants can incur taxes.

Consumers bear portions of certain business taxes through prices.

That is why “they don’t file federal income tax returns” and “they pay no taxes” are not interchangeable statements. (ITEP)

How much do undocumented immigrants actually pay in taxes?

The most detailed recent national estimate comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

For 2022, ITEP estimated:

ITEP estimated an average tax contribution of approximately $8,889 per undocumented immigrant in its modeled 2022 population. (ITEP)

Those numbers should not be misrepresented as a literal IRS census.

ITEP begins with American Community Survey microdata and uses a residual methodology to estimate which respondents are likely undocumented. It then applies tax models and adjustments for income, tax compliance, remittances and other characteristics. (ITEP)

ITEP does not assume perfect federal income-tax compliance. Its central model assumes a 60% income-tax contribution rate for the undocumented population. Under a deliberately more pessimistic combination of assumptions, its 2022 tax estimate falls from $96.7 billion to $86.4 billion. Under another set of assumptions it reaches $111.7 billion. (ITEP)

That sensitivity range matters.

The responsible interpretation is not “exactly $96,700,000,000 was verified to the dollar.”

It is that the evidence strongly contradicts the notion that this population contributes little or nothing in taxation.

Where the real taxpayer costs actually occur

There are public costs associated with unauthorized immigration.

But they often are not the costs emphasized in political advertisements.

The largest recurring state and local expenditure is frequently education, not an undocumented adult collecting a welfare check.

Under Plyler v. Doe, public schools cannot deny K–12 enrollment to children because of their own or their parents’ immigration status. A school district therefore bears the cost of educating an undocumented child just as it bears the cost of educating other children residing in the district. (U.S. Department of Education)

Health systems can incur emergency and uncompensated-care expenses. States choosing to create their own immigrant coverage programs incur additional state expenditures. Police, courts and corrections have costs. Border operations, immigration courts, detention and removal operations consume federal resources. (Medicaid)

These are legitimate subjects for fiscal analysis.

But notice what has happened to the argument.

We have moved from:

“They cross the border and get food stamps and welfare.”

to a much more defensible question:

“How should we attribute the costs of education, emergency medicine, citizen children, policing, immigration enforcement and other public services against the tax revenue generated by unauthorized immigrants?”

Those are not remotely the same claim.

Citizen children are the accounting issue almost everyone should understand

Suppose an undocumented couple has a baby in the United States.

The child is a U.S. citizen.

If that child attends a public school, receives Medicaid or qualifies for nutrition assistance, the government is spending money. A fiscal model can reasonably ask whether that expenditure would have occurred had the parents never immigrated.

The National Academies explicitly recognizes this as a legitimate analytical question. It notes that even though the children of immigrants may be native-born citizens, their fiscal costs and later contributions would not have arisen in the United States in the counterfactual world where their parents never immigrated. (National Academies Publications)

But that accounting decision creates an obligation for intellectual consistency.

If the child’s education, health care and childhood benefits are charged to immigration, then the child’s eventual income taxes, payroll taxes, economic output and other fiscal contributions as an adult cannot simply disappear from the calculation.

The National Academies found that second-generation immigrants are among the population’s strongest fiscal contributors and emphasized that treating immigrant descendants over their life cycle substantially changes fiscal analysis. (National Academies Publications)

A model that assigns the government the cost of educating a six-year-old citizen because her parents immigrated, but stops the clock before she becomes a 35-year-old taxpayer, has not discovered the “true cost of immigration.”

It has selected a time horizon.

That may answer a particular short-term budget question.

It does not answer every fiscal question.

What about the claim that illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion a year?

This deserves serious treatment because the number is widely repeated.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, published a 2023 study estimating that illegal immigration imposed $182.1 billion in government expenditures, offset by about $31.4 billion in taxes, producing a claimed net annual fiscal burden of approximately $150.7 billion. (FAIRUS)

That number should not simply be dismissed.

It should be opened.

FAIR’s model includes approximately 15.5 million people it classifies as illegal aliens plus 5.4 million U.S.-born citizen children of those immigrants. In other words, part of the $150.7 billion headline is explicitly a cost assigned to American citizens because of their parents’ immigration status. (FAIRUS)

FAIR’s own breakdown is revealing.

It attributes roughly $73.2 billion of state and local costs to education, including $70.4 billion for K–12 schools. It estimates another $21.8 billion for state and local justice expenditures and $18.6 billion in state medical costs.

Its separate state/local category labeled “welfare” is about $2 billion. (FAIRUS)

So even within one of the most frequently cited studies arguing that illegal immigration creates a massive fiscal burden, the enormous number is not primarily a story about undocumented adults collecting welfare.

It is overwhelmingly a story about education, medicine, enforcement, justice and how costs associated with citizen children are allocated.

That is a radically different proposition.

There is another problem with the $150.7 billion figure: the tax estimates do not agree

FAIR estimated approximately $31.4 billion in total federal, state and local tax contributions. ITEP estimated $96.7 billion for 2022.

That is a difference of more than $65 billion before arguing about a single expenditure. (FAIRUS)

Those two numbers cannot both be treated as measurements from a national cash register. They are model outputs based on different population estimates, assumptions and tax methodologies.

There is an additional definitional issue.

FAIR’s federal expenditure calculation includes Customs and Border Protection, ICE enforcement and removal operations, immigration courts, detention-related expenses and other enforcement expenditures. Those are real government costs. (FAIRUS)

But “the government spends money enforcing immigration law” is not the same proposition as “undocumented immigrants receive that money as public benefits.”

If Congress increases ICE’s budget by $10 billion, an immigrant has not thereby received a $10 billion welfare benefit.

The expenditure belongs in an analysis of the cost of immigration policy or enforcement.

It does not belong in a sentence claiming immigrants “receive $10 billion from taxpayers.”

Accounting categories matter.

FAIR’s SNAP number illustrates the problem particularly well

FAIR’s federal table assigns approximately $5.76 billion in SNAP spending to illegal immigration. Yet USDA states unequivocally that federal SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented noncitizens. (FAIRUS)

Those facts are not necessarily contradictory.

They tell us that FAIR’s number cannot simply mean “the federal government legally handed $5.76 billion in food stamps to undocumented adults.”

FAIR explicitly includes U.S.-born citizen children in its fiscal universe and attributes costs associated with dependents and households to illegal immigration. (FAIRUS)

That may be a defensible counterfactual choice for answering one question.

It becomes misleading when the resulting number is translated into:

Illegal immigrants get billions of dollars in food stamps.

That conclusion does not follow from the underlying eligibility rules.

The difference between cost attributable to a family containing an undocumented immigrant and benefit legally received by an undocumented immigrant is the difference between fiscal analysis and propaganda.

What does more independent research find?

The National Academies’ major review of immigration economics provides a useful reason not to expect one universal “net cost” number.

It found that first-generation immigrants, on average, can impose higher fiscal costs than native-born generations, particularly on state and local governments, substantially because state and local governments finance education for children.

At the same time, immigrants tend to be relatively young and working-age, which improves the federal fiscal picture, while their children—the second generation—become particularly strong fiscal contributors. Over a 75-year horizon, the National Academies concluded that immigration’s fiscal effects tend to be positive federally but negative for state and local governments under the assumptions it examined. (National Academies Publications)

That is an important finding because it explains how two Americans can encounter apparently contradictory realities.

A school district with a rapidly expanding student population may genuinely face a budget strain.

The federal Treasury can simultaneously collect additional payroll and income taxes.

Both can be true.

The money does not enter and leave through the same government.

What did the Congressional Budget Office find about the recent immigration surge?

The Congressional Budget Office provides another useful piece of evidence, but it requires a major caveat.

CBO’s 2024 analysis did not examine only undocumented immigrants. It examined the unexpected 2021–2026 surge in what CBO calls “other foreign nationals,” a category containing people with several different statuses—some with permission to remain and some without. CBO also did not calculate the surge’s complete state and local fiscal effect. (Congressional Budget Office)

Within those boundaries, however, CBO estimated something politically significant.

It projected that the surge would increase federal revenues by approximately $1.2 trillion between 2024 and 2034, while increasing mandatory spending and interest costs by about $0.3 trillion, producing roughly a $0.9 trillion reduction in cumulative federal deficits. Income and payroll taxes paid by immigrants were responsible for most of the direct revenue increase. (Congressional Budget Office)

CBO also estimated higher federal spending on Medicaid, SNAP, child nutrition and other programs as members of the surge population or their U.S.-born children became eligible. (Congressional Budget Office)

That is precisely why the report is so useful.

CBO did not assume that immigration creates no costs.

It estimated both sides.

And after doing so, the agency projected a substantial net improvement in the federal budget from that particular immigration surge.

That finding cannot legitimately be transformed into “every undocumented immigrant is a fiscal profit.”

But neither can a claim that recent immigration merely empties the federal Treasury survive contact with CBO’s analysis.

Immigration’s fiscal effect and immigration’s economic effect are not the same thing

There is another common error in this debate: assuming that a government budget calculation measures the entire economic consequence of immigration.

It does not.

Imagine a worker who produces $60,000 worth of economic output, receives $40,000 in wages, pays several thousand dollars in taxes and costs a local government several thousand dollars in public services.

Their contribution to GDP, their fiscal balance with government and their effect on another worker’s wage are three different questions.

The National Academies’ review concluded that the long-run effect of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small, although negative effects are more likely to fall on prior immigrants and some lower-skilled native workers who compete most directly with newcomers. It also found little evidence of a major overall employment reduction among native-born workers. (National Academies Publications)

The same review found broader economic benefits through labor-force growth, consumer demand, lower prices for certain services, geographic labor-market adjustment and innovation, while emphasizing that the size and distribution of those effects differ by immigrant skill level and local economic conditions. (National Academies Publications)

So “does immigration increase GDP?”, “does it increase federal revenue?”, “does it strain a particular school district?” and “does it reduce the wages of a particular type of worker?” can all produce different answers.

A competent immigration policy debate has to be capable of holding more than one variable in its head.

The most important claim check

So are undocumented immigrants a net cost or a net benefit?

The most defensible answer is:

There is no single credible number that answers that question for every level of government, every time horizon and every definition of cost.

Anyone claiming otherwise should immediately be asked five questions.

What population are you counting?

Are U.S.-citizen children being counted as costs of illegal immigration?

If their childhood costs are counted, are their future tax contributions counted too?

Are border security, ICE, detention and immigration-court budgets being treated as money “received” by immigrants?

And are federal, state and local budgets being combined even though immigration can improve one while straining another?

The National Academies specifically warns that assumptions about children, time horizons and allocation of government costs can materially change fiscal estimates. (National Academies Publications)

Once those questions are answered, the apparent contradiction among studies becomes much easier to understand.

What can be stated with high confidence

Several conclusions survive the methodological disputes.

Unauthorized immigrants are not broadly eligible for the major federal welfare programs they are routinely accused of exploiting. Federal SNAP, ordinary Medicaid, SSI, TANF, Marketplace coverage and federal housing assistance all contain immigration-status restrictions. (FNA)

Unauthorized immigrants nevertheless pay substantial taxes. The exact dollar amount has to be modeled because the government does not maintain a complete immigration-status tax ledger, but taxes arise through payroll withholding, ITIN filing, purchases, rent and property ownership. ITEP’s central 2022 estimate is $96.7 billion, and even its lower sensitivity scenario remains above $86 billion. (ITEP)

A substantial portion of those taxes finance programs from which an unauthorized worker may receive little or no direct benefit while remaining unauthorized. ITEP estimates $33.9 billion in Social Security, Medicare and unemployment-insurance taxes in 2022, while SSA has historically found unauthorized employment to be a net contributor to Social Security cash flow. (ITEP)

Unauthorized immigration also imposes genuine costs. The strongest fiscal case for those costs is not the cartoon version of an adult crossing the border and immediately collecting every American welfare program. It is the much more serious question of schools, emergency medicine, state programs, mixed-status families, public infrastructure and enforcement. (U.S. Department of Education)

And federal and local fiscal effects can move in opposite directions. That is one of the most important findings in the National Academies literature and helps explain why local experiences and national fiscal studies can appear to disagree while both contain legitimate information. (National Academies Publications)

The political debate is often built around a category error

The United States can reasonably debate how many people should be admitted, what should happen to people who enter unlawfully, how asylum should work, what employers should be required to verify, whether legal immigration should increase or decrease, how state benefits should operate and what an eventual path to legal status should look like.

None of those policy disagreements require Americans to accept bad statistics.

Opposing illegal immigration does not make a false claim about SNAP true.

Supporting immigrants does not eliminate the cost of educating children.

Wanting stronger border enforcement does not turn an ICE detention budget into a welfare payment to an immigrant.

Believing immigration contributes to the economy does not mean every individual immigrant produces a positive fiscal balance in every year of life.

And acknowledging taxpayer costs does not erase tens of billions of dollars in taxes paid by people who are frequently described as contributing nothing.

The purpose of serious analysis is not to select whichever half of that ledger produces the desired political emotion.

It is to keep the ledger open.

The bottom line

The familiar story is remarkably simple:

Undocumented immigrants enter the United States. They do not pay taxes. They collect welfare. American taxpayers finance them.

The evidence does not support that story.

The actual system is stranger.

Millions of unauthorized immigrants work inside the American economy and pay taxes through purchases, rent, payroll systems and income-tax filings. Billions of dollars flow from their labor into Social Security and Medicare. Federal law simultaneously excludes them from many of the programs those taxes finance. (ITEP)

They are nevertheless part of society, so they generate costs. Their children attend schools. Hospitals treat emergencies. Roads are used. Courts operate. State governments sometimes choose to provide additional services. The government spends enormous amounts enforcing immigration law itself. (U.S. Department of Education)

The difficult policy question is how America wants to manage that reality.

The factual question is considerably easier.

Undocumented immigrants are not a population that simply receives public money while contributing nothing in return. That description is demonstrably wrong.

Nor is unauthorized immigration fiscally free.

The most credible evidence instead describes a population that contributes substantial tax revenue while facing unusually restrictive federal-benefit eligibility, produces real but unevenly distributed public costs, and has fiscal effects that change dramatically depending on whether the analysis looks at Washington, a local school district, a single year or an entire generation.

That may not fit comfortably on a campaign sign.

It is the ledger the country actually has.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do illegal immigrants get food stamps?

Undocumented noncitizens are not eligible for federal SNAP benefits. USDA states that SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented noncitizens. Eligible U.S.-citizen children or other qualifying members of a mixed-status household can receive SNAP in their own right. (FNA)

Do undocumented immigrants pay federal income taxes?

Some do. The IRS issues ITINs to people who need a taxpayer identification number for federal tax purposes but are not eligible for a Social Security number. Income and payroll taxes can also be withheld from wages. (IRS)

How much do undocumented immigrants pay in taxes?

ITEP’s most detailed current national study estimates that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, including $59.4 billion federally and $37.3 billion to states and localities. The figure is a model-based estimate rather than an administrative count. (ITEP)

Can illegal immigrants get Medicaid?

Undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for federally funded full-scope Medicaid. Federal reimbursement can be available for qualifying emergency medical services, and some states use state-only money to provide broader coverage regardless of immigration status. (Medicaid)

Do undocumented immigrants pay Social Security taxes?

Yes, many do. ITEP estimates $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes attributable to undocumented immigrants and their employers in 2022. SSA has also documented payroll taxes associated with unauthorized work. (ITEP)

Can undocumented immigrants collect Social Security?

Remaining unlawfully present generally prevents ordinary payment under Social Security’s lawful-presence rules, and many unauthorized earnings are never credited to the worker’s record. Individual circumstances can change if immigration status later changes or other eligibility provisions apply, so “no undocumented worker can ever receive a benefit based partly on earlier work” would be too absolute. (Social Security Administration)

What is the biggest taxpayer cost associated with illegal immigration?

It depends on the methodology and jurisdiction, but education is one of the largest state and local costs in models that attribute children’s expenses to their immigrant parents. FAIR’s restrictive-immigration study, for example, assigns about $73.2 billion to state/local education—far more than its roughly $2 billion state/local “welfare” category. (FAIRUS)

Is the claim that illegal immigration costs $150 billion per year true?

It is more accurate to say that FAIR estimates a $150.7 billion annual net fiscal cost under its methodology. The figure includes U.S.-born citizen children, immigration-enforcement expenditures and a substantially lower estimate of immigrant tax payments than ITEP uses. It should therefore be presented as one model’s conclusion, not as an audited federal statistic. (FAIRUS)

Does immigration lower American wages?

The National Academies concluded that the long-run impact on native-born wages overall is very small, although negative effects are more likely among prior immigrants and some lower-skilled native workers who are close labor-market substitutes for newcomers. (National Academies Publications)

Does immigration increase or decrease the federal deficit?

For the specific 2021–2026 immigration surge studied by CBO—which includes people with multiple immigration statuses and is not synonymous with the entire undocumented population—CBO projected about $1.2 trillion in additional federal revenue and a net $0.9 trillion reduction in deficits over 2024–2034. (Congressional Budget Office)

Methodology and evidence note

This article deliberately separates three questions that are frequently blended together: benefit eligibility, tax contribution and fiscal impact.

Eligibility questions are primarily grounded in current federal agency guidance. Tax estimates are identified as estimates and their assumptions are disclosed. Fiscal-cost studies are treated as models rather than audited ledgers, with special attention to treatment of citizen children, government enforcement expenditures, tax compliance and time horizon.

The article also distinguishes research about undocumented immigrants specifically from research concerning immigrants generally. CBO’s recent immigration-surge analysis and the National Academies’ broader immigration findings are therefore used for context rather than falsely presented as studies exclusively of undocumented immigrants. (Congressional Budget Office)

Evidence confidence on the article’s central conclusion: High. Federal benefit eligibility rules are directly documented by government agencies; the existence of substantial tax contributions is supported across government and independent research; and the methodological sensitivity of immigration fiscal estimates is explicitly recognized by the National Academies. The precise national net fiscal balance of unauthorized immigration is considerably less certain because no single administrative dataset measures it and competing models make materially different attribution assumptions. (FNA)

References and Further Reading

Federal benefit eligibility

U.S. Department of Agriculture — SNAP Eligibility. Current USDA guidance explicitly states that SNAP eligibility has never extended to undocumented noncitizens. (FNA)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — Eligibility for Non-Citizens in Medicaid and CHIP. Federal Medicaid guidance explaining the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from federally funded full coverage and the emergency-services exception. (Medicaid)

HealthCare.gov — Health Coverage for Immigrants. Current federal Marketplace eligibility rules, including the exclusion of undocumented immigrants. (HealthCare.gov)

Social Security Administration — SSI Eligibility for Noncitizens. Current eligibility requirements requiring qualifying immigration classifications. (Social Security Administration)

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — Restrictions on Assistance to Noncitizens. Federal rules governing immigration-status eligibility for HUD-assisted housing. (HUD)

Taxes and Social Security

Internal Revenue Service — Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Explanation of ITINs and their strictly tax-related purpose. (IRS)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants. Detailed 2024 study estimating federal, state and local taxes attributable to undocumented immigrants in 2022, with methodology and sensitivity analysis. (ITEP)

Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary — Effects of Unauthorized Immigration on Social Security. SSA actuarial analysis of unauthorized employment, payroll contributions and benefit payments. (Social Security Administration)

Fiscal and economic effects

Congressional Budget Office — Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy. CBO’s analysis of the federal revenue, spending, deficit and economic effects of the 2021–2026 immigration surge. (Congressional Budget Office)

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Major independent review of immigration’s effects on wages, economic growth and federal versus state/local finances across generations. (National Academies Publications)

Pew Research Center — U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Reached a Record 14 Million in 2023. Detailed demographic and workforce estimates with discussion of what Pew includes in its unauthorized population category. (Pew Research Center)

KFF — State Health Coverage for Immigrants and Implications for Health Coverage and Care. Current 2026 review of state-funded health programs covering some residents regardless of immigration status. (KFF)

The strongest opposing fiscal estimate

Federation for American Immigration Reform — The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers. FAIR’s 2023 estimate of a $150.7 billion annual net fiscal cost, including its population assumptions and itemized expenditures and tax estimates. It is included here because any serious examination of the issue should inspect rather than ignore one of the most frequently cited arguments for a large negative fiscal impact. (FAIRUS)