Should immigrants be taxed?

This is an interesting issue, on which I'm not sure exactly how it should be. On one hand, I'm opposed to taxes and any impediment to the free use of one's money. If these people earn the money, and are in the USA legally, they should be allowed to spend it or send it where or however they choose.

However, if they are pleading poverty and therefor receiving a lot of services for free that the rest of us have to pay for, there may be some merit to having them pay some kind of fee or tax to reimburse the taxpayers who are subsidizing them. This is also similar to the argument against repealing the sales tax on food and medicine that I heard during the recent campaign season. Many people wanted to keep the sales tax on food and medicine just for the specific reason to force Mexican immigrants to pay something in taxes, since they spend a good portion of their disposable income on food.

This is no longer just an issue for border states, such as the PRC. Here in NorthWest Arkansas, there is a fast growing population of Mexicans who work for the Tyson poultry plants. Just a few weeks ago, I was behind a woman in a Conoco station who was using their Western Union service to wire some money back to Mexico and there were several others in line to do the same thing.

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 12/02/2002 03:45:00 PM Send this post: