Unauthorized persons pay about $100B in federal, state and local taxes, including income and sales taxes. That is about 1.5% of total taxes paid.  Since unauthorized persons (about 11 million) account for about 3.3% of the total population, this shows that unauthorized persons are less well off than the average for the country. The median income of unauthorized persons is about $37,000, vs.$60,000 for U.S. citizens. The typical federal income tax rate for each is about 11.2% and 14% respectively.  The Trump administration is imposing a 5% text on remittances, which tax is not included above.

Unauthorized persons paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes. They are not eligible for both these programs.

Much is made by the anti-immigration lobby about how immigrants feed off public programs. It is more accurately said that households that are low income, whether citizens, legal or illegal immigrants, tend to rely of some public programs.  Without getting into the complex assessment of which public programs are legally available to legal and illegal foreigners, I looked at patterns of accessibility by household income. The median immigrant household income let’s put at $50,000 and a citizen household income at $100,000.

The $50,000 household is above the strict poverty line but still within range for several programs, especially housing, CHIP, and ACA subsidies, and possibly childcare. SNAP is unlikely but possible. The $100,000 household is out of reach for means-tested programs, though they may still receive modest ACA subsidies if not insured through work. In practice, a $50,000 household would have a 50–70% chance of using at least one major public subsidy program, while a $100,000 household’s probability is closer to 10–15%, almost entirely through ACA subsidies. However, access to public programs is formally and  largely barred for unauthorized persons and constrained for many legal immigrants.

Go here.