Bud turned me on to this. It’s another example of government’s inability to manage anything well. The IRS pays $billions a year – $4.2 billion in 2010 – to illegal aliens. The scam works this way; if you have a low enough income, the IRS will pay you $1,000 for every child you claim, without limit and they pay you whether you are in the country legally or not. This has been going on since 1998 but was made far worse in 2010 by The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act. The IRS is powerless to stop this unless Congress changes the law.
Republicans Target Child Tax-Break 'Free-Funds' For Illegal Immigrants
AP and FoxNews.com, February 09, 2012
Tax Cut Deal: How It Affects You
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN Money
December 17, 2010
How to Stop Child-Tax Credit Fraud by Illegal Immigrants
Rep. Sam Johnson, Republican, 3rd Congressional District, Texas
September 18, 2011 -- 8:05 PM
Can you believe these people in Congress? It certainly should be the law that illegals must pay income tax and it certainly should also be the law that illegals cannot get a social security number but when we issue a Individual Taxpayer Identification Number to an illegal so she can pay her taxes, why aren’t we sending her name and address to INS? Oh yeah, and why don’t we arrest the employer for hiring an illegal? How hard is it to fix this stuff?
In 2010, we did two things. We doubled the child tax credit to $1,000 per child and we made the credit “refundable” which in politician speak means you get the check even if you don’t owe any taxes – we made it welfare.
Hispanics, Harry Reid and a few other Democrats say changing the law “targets” Hispanics and poor people – it targets illegals that should not be getting taxpayer handouts and certainly not any other specific group. The chutzpa of these people.
There are certainly enough Democrats that would join Republicans to change this but nothing will be done by way of reform because the Majority Leader in the Senate can block any legislation from coming to the floor. Senate Majority Leader Reid of Nevada says that some of the children illegal workers are citizens because they were born in this country and they deserve the handout. This stuff makes sense to progressives but we are either a nation of laws or we’re not.
This brings me to the IRS which pays the credit to whoever applies for it. They don’t know or appear to care whether the children actually exist or whether they live in America or back home in a foreign nation. So the American citizen welfare queens should be claiming 12 kids on their forms too because nobody checks – what will you bet that they already do exactly that?
The 2010 expansion of the credit expires at the end of the year unless Congress extends it but that will only reduce the problem, not solve it and you can smell the extension coming. The combined fraud in our entitlement systems is beyond comprehension. What we need is a lot more leadership and a lot less government.
Want to see what a real political leader looks like? Watch this interview.
Senator Tom Coburn
Charlie Rose, May 1, 2012 – 53 minutes
Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, member of President Obama's Deficit Reduction Committee on his book "The Debt Bomb"