An ugly tax in a ‘beautiful bill'

Boston Globe

21-05-2025

But it's a different story for immigrants sharing their earnings with loved ones in their homelands.
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Tax cuts may be important to the GOP brand, but these days so is ill will toward migrants. A new tax on remittances would generate some revenue for the federal government, but as with so many of
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Mark Krikorian, who heads the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that lobbies for restricting immigrants, makes a similar point.
'One of the main reasons people come here is to work and send money home,'
Nativists also argue that remittances drain money from the United States — that dollars earned here should stay here. 'Remittance-Senders (Mostly Illegals) Ship $25 Billion a Year Out of the U.S.,' the Center for Immigration Studies
All this is bad economics and bad public policy. Even from a MAGA perspective, taxing remittances is counterproductive and unwise.
The easier it is for workers in the United States to send money to relatives and friends in other countries, the less inclined those relatives and friends will be to risk migrating to the United States unlawfully. In many poor communities, from Central America to India,
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foreigners to migrate in order to make money.
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In short, Vance and Krikorian have it exactly backward: Squeezing remittances doesn't 'disincentivize illegal immigration.' It encourages it.
Equally wrongheaded is the notion that remittances represent a loss of wealth from the United States.
As most economists will confirm, dollars sent abroad — as remittances, to pay for imports, or to buy foreign currency —
A party that claims to uphold limited government, free markets, and low taxes shouldn't be micromanaging the private finances of individual workers. Taxing remittances isn't sound economics or sound conservatism — it's just a way to punish people for sharing what they earn with their families. Targeting the wages immigrants send home won't protect Americans, won't strengthen border security, and won't boost the US economy.
Republicans will gain nothing from a tax hike that is both ineffective and mean-spirited. There may be admirable provisions in the GOP's 'big, beautiful bill.' This isn't one of them.
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Jeff Jacoby can be reached at