The $2 Trillion Threat: How Pushing Out Immigrants Kills the American Economy

Anti-immigrant policies inevitably backfire on businesses and everyday Americans

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

In college, I had a close friend who was an undocumented immigrant. She'd moved to the U.S. as an international student and, for a bunch of reasons, had to quit college and stay on in New York. As a result, for the time being, she was without papers. To survive, she worked exploitative administrative and customer service jobs that paid her petty wages in cash.

Despite being undocumented, she did something that didn’t make sense to me at the time—she filed her taxes every single year. She was preparing for if and when she had the chance to become a U.S. citizen, her tax history would work in her favor.

Like my friend, millions of undocumented immigrants have quietly contributed to the U.S. economy, trusting the government's assurance that filing taxes was safe. Now, that trust is under threat.

A proposed agreement betwe…