What percentage of US tax dollars are used for illegals in 2024

1. The data we do have: billions paid by undocumented households

Multiple non‑partisan tax researchers and immigration advocates estimate undocumented households pay tens of billions in federal, state, and local taxes each year — for example, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022 ^{[1] [2]}, and the American Immigration Council reported undocumented‑led households paid $89.8 billion in total taxes in 2023 ^{[4] [5]}, a range that shows agreement on scale even if year‑to‑year estimates differ ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Competing cost estimates: who counts spending as “for illegals”?

Advocacy groups and some congressional offices produce much larger headline cost figures by summing federal, state, and local expenditures they attribute to unauthorized migrants; for example, FAIR and allied reports put fiscal costs in the neighborhood of $150–$182 billion annually as of 2022 ^{[3] [6]}, and some policy shop releases from House committees emphasize Medicaid and emergency services line items to justify large totals ^{[7] [8]}. Those studies differ sharply in methodology — what services are counted, whether children of undocumented parents are included, how long‑term fiscal impacts are tallied — which inflates disagreement about any single percentage ^{[3] [7]}.

3. Why a single “percentage of U.S. tax dollars” is not supportable from these sources

To compute “percentage of U.S. tax dollars used for illegals” one needs a clear numerator (which costs to count and which population to include) and a clear denominator (total federal, state, and local tax revenue for the same year) — the provided sources give several plausible numerators (taxes paid by undocumented people; costs attributed to undocumented people) but do not supply a consensual total‑tax‑revenue baseline within the same methodological frame, so the precise percentage for 2024 cannot be derived solely from the supplied reporting ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.

4. Reasonable framing and the available context

Using the sources as context, a more useful framing is that undocumented households are net contributors in the sense they pay substantial taxes — tens of billions annually — while other studies frame net fiscal burdens that are larger because they count public services and emergency spending ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The American Immigration Council also frames immigrant contributions as a share of tax collections — saying immigrant households (legal plus undocumented) paid roughly $16.80 of every $100 in taxes in one analysis — but that is for all immigrants and not solely undocumented people, and the methodology and year differ from the ITEP and FAIR figures ^{[5] [4]}.

5. Hidden agendas, methodological choices, and what to watch for

Different authors have obvious incentives: advocacy groups for immigrants emphasize contributions and downward biases in undocumented tax estimates ^{[1] [2]}, while restrictive‑immigration organizations and some House committee releases focus on fiscal costs and border metrics to justify policy changes and budget priorities ^{[3] [7]}. The choice of inclusion (e.g., emergency Medicaid only vs. full lifecycle education and health costs), the population denominator (unauthorized alone vs. all immigrants), and the revenue baseline (federal only vs. federal + state + local) drive wildly different percentage claims, which is why headline percentages without methodological footnotes are misleading ^{[3] [7] [5]}.