Study: Undocumented workers in Texas pay $5 billion annually in state and local taxes

Despite efforts by Gov. Greg Abbott and other GOP politicos to paint migrants as an economic threat to Texas, undocumented workers paid $4.9 billion in state and local taxes in 2022, according to a new study by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Indeed, undocumented migrants, whom Abbott referred to as "rapists" and "terrorists" earlier this month during his speech at the Republican National Convention, accounted for 6% of total tax revenues collected by the Lone Star State that year, according to data from the Federation of Tax Administrators. ITEP, a Washington, D.C.-based public-policy think tank, used established techniques for estimating the size and tax-relevant characteristics of the undocumented population to assess the overall tax contributions of the estimated 10.9 million such migrants working in the U.S. in 2022.