On The View, of course, there was another conversation about illegal immigrants in America, and the hosts were using two main arguments as a defense for illegal immigration: They pay lots of taxes, and they commit fewer crimes.

Let’s use some common sense when we discuss this topic and remove the talking points. I find this discussion is littered with repeatable statistics that are rarely challenged. It’s the same when people find headlines they like—because it confirms their biases—they just yammer on about the headline for a study they never examined.

I wanted to know where they’re getting these numbers from and especially wanted to figure out what constitutes an “undocumented immigrant” in the study. Often, what you’ll find is that their definitions skew the results and give a false impression. I didn’t find this in this case.

In the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) July 2024 report “Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants”, the taxes referred to are a comprehensive total of federal, state, and local taxes paid by undocumented immigrants in 2022, estimated at $96.7 billion overall.

This breaks down as: $59.4 billion to the federal government. $37.3 billion to state and local governments.

I’m not dismissing the numbers, but what I am doing is challenging the entirety of their picture when it comes to the life of illegal immigrants.

Imagine you escaped from prison and now you’re on the run from the law. You’ve already committed an illegal act, and you find yourself committing more crimes to stay off the radar (ironically).

For example, you’ll assume a new identity, get fake identification cards, or steal someone’s identity to avoid detection. You might take odd jobs to make enough money to live that are off the books because you don’t have a valid SSN to use for verification.

If you get into a car accident, you’ll flee the scene because you don’t want your identity to get compromised when they dig into your story or discover your identification is false.

This is essentially how illegal immigrants often live, and when you commit a crime like entering a country illegally or overstaying a visa, unless you’re brazen, your life is dedicated to blending in and not being noticed.

Wrong Speak Films is currently crowdfunding a new documentary, The Illegal Highways, about illegal immigrants in the trucking industry and the victims they leave behind. It’s victim centric concept that hits home how detrimental this situation is for the safety of Americans on the road.

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So, when they claim that they pay lots of taxes, it should be measured against common sense for the life of illegal immigrants. Employee taxes are initiated by employers, so it could be plausible that illegals are paying taxes (with fake information) but not by their own volition.

In the same way, you pay state taxes when you go to the store and buy an item. These are taxes that are unavoidable and not initiated by the taxpayers.

The framing of the tax statement on The View is as if every April, illegal immigrants are opening up TurboTax to pay the government money just because. How would they file? They don’t have an SSN. They don’t have a valid tax identification number. Even if they stole an identity, why would they pay taxes on a stolen identity?

When conducting studies like this, you can only deal with the numbers that are in front of you, but illegal immigrants, by and large, are invisible in a paper sense because they’re not supposed to be here.

Speaking of which, the “illegals commit fewer crimes” narrative is absurd. I just gave you a massive reason as to why that’s not the case, but the biggest of all is that they are here illegally.

Their existence in our country, by default, makes them start off by violating our immigration laws (you know...a crime). Compound this with the prevalence of forgeries and identity theft, and it’s even more evident how ridiculous this statement is.

But let’s say Sunny is 100% correct. Let’s say that they commit far fewer crimes than American citizens: Sunny still misses the point.