Immigration and Midterms Election
The Midterm Election is quickly approaching and local organizations are encouraging voters to head to the polls.
The American Immigration Council says immigration policy is a top issue for voters. The council’s focus is to make sure the public understands how important immigrants are in our communities
The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how we think about and really how we react toward immigrants and immigration. That is why they started to compile data on everything from population size to English proficiency to tax contributions of the Illinois immigrant population.
Their fact sheet shows over 20 percent of all business owners in the Chicagoland area are immigrants and 48.2 percent of all immigrants in the state are naturalized citizens.
In terms of taxes, their data shows immigrants paid $9.8 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2014.
As consumers, immigrants spent 40.1 billion; entrepreneurs generated $2.5 billion in business revenue in 2015.
