A massive new fiscal deep dive finds that immigrants have poured far more into American tax coffers than they have drawn out in benefits over the last three decades, and that conclusion plays out very differently in a city built on immigrant labor like San Diego. The headline takeaway directly undercuts the familiar claim that immigrants are a drag on public budgets, and local advocates and tax pros say the figures look a lot like what they already see every spring at tax time and in everyday labor markets.
What the report found
According to a report by the Cato Institute, immigrants generated roughly $24.2 trillion in tax revenue from 1994 through 2023, while associated government spending totaled about $13.6 trillion. That pencils out to a net surplus of $10.6 trillion. Once the authors factor in lower interest costs because the government needed to borrow less, they say the overall fiscal benefit climbs to about $14.5 trillion. By their estimate, immigrants trimmed U.S. budget deficits by around one-third over that span, and the gap between what immigrants pay in and what they receive has grown in recent years.
In San Diego, tax preparers and worker advocates greeted the numbers with more of a nod than a gasp. “Immigrants pay a lot of taxes,” said Adrian Espinoza, an IRS enrolled agent who serves many immigrant households. He told NBC 7 San Diego that recent changes to the tax code have actually left some of his clients paying more. Alor Calderon, who leads San Diego’s Employee Rights Center, said the stubborn public image of immigrants as “takers” does not match what frontline workers and organizers report.
Big annual numbers, local implications…