Illegal immigrants accounted for 65,000 people or 1.1 percent of the population in Missouri in 2012,
according to the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council. There were about 45,000 illegal immigrants in the labor force or about 1.4 percent of the state’s workforce.
The number of illegal immigrants in the state jumped from 55,000 or 0.9 percent of the state’s population in 2010,
a study by the Pew Research Center revealed. Undocumented immigrants accounted for about 40,000 people or 1.3 percent of the workforce.
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The Immigration Policy Center cited a report by the Perryman Group, which concluded that the state would lose $2.3 billion in economic activity and about 13,859 jobs if illegal immigrants were removed from the labor force.
The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy reported that unauthorized immigrants in Missouri paid $44 million in state and local taxes in 2010. That included $8.3 million in state income taxes, $31.7 million in sales taxes, and $4.1 million in property taxes.
Tax revenues would rise significantly with unauthorized immigrants receiving legal status. Their state and local taxes would be as high as $57.2 million, according to the institute. That would include $33.5 million in sales taxes, $19.4 million in state income taxes, and $4.3 million in property taxes.
The overall immigrant or foreign-born share of the state’s population grew from 1.6 percent in 1990 to 3.9 percent in 2013, according to results from the U.S. Census Bureau. Of the immigrants in Missouri, 45.2 percent of them, or 105,387, were naturalized American citizens and eligible to vote in 2013.
More than five percent of Missourians are Latino or Asian, according to the American Immigration Council, which states that immigrants overall made up 4.7 percent of the state’s labor force in 2013, meaning 143,974 workers.
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A study by the Fiscal Policy Institute concluded that “immigrants contribute to the economy in direct relation to their share of the population.”
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