An excellent, politically safe way to curb illegal immigration is through tax reform. Tax Reform? Yes, the two are related. There is legislation pending in Congress to replace the entire tax code with a 23% across-the-board national sales tax (NRST), called the FairTax Act. ALL legal US residents would recieve a "prebate" (Called a Basic Consumption allowance, or BCA) that pays for the NRST up to the poverty line. However, illegals would get no such prebate. The illegal worker would not receive a monthly BCA because he has no Social Security number, making life in America much harder. As a result, there is a much larger incentive to migrate here legally and a large tax burden for migrating to the US illegally.
Also, it is extremely lucrative to currently employ illegal immigrants because they essentially work tax-free and are paid under the table. Under current law, an illegal being paid $10/hour in cash is equivalent to a legal worker being paid anywhere from $12-14/hour (15.3% in payroll taxes plus whatever the marginal tax rate is). Under the FairTax, it won’t matter; both workers would make the same because there are no taxes. And since there are penalties for hiring illegal immigrants, employers would naturally choose legal workers if there is no price difference.
We must enact the NRST, called the FairTax. The bill in Cognress is called HR 25 and S 1493 in the Senate. To learn more, go to:
http://www.fairtax.org
or
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org
You are right on target, R_S.
The NRST is the right thing to do, for a whole host of reasons.
23 percent? Is this plus or minus state taxes? how about fifteen percent and call it a day?