Senate Proposal: Illegal Immigrants Would Pay Avg. $17/Month for Amnesty

Details of the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration reform proposal that have surfaced show illegal immigrants will only have to pay slightly less than $17 per month–or roughly 10 cents an hour out of their paychecks from full-time work–to receive amnesty and a shot at citizenship.

The 17-page document detailing the Gang of Eight’s forthcoming legislation shows that illegal immigrants will have to pay a total of about $2,000 in fines to the federal government through the ten-year path to “Lawful Permanent Resident Status” (which translates out to about a 13-year path to citizenship).

Illegal immigrants who were inside the United States before December 31, 2011, who have had “maintenance of continuous physical presence since then,” will need to pay a $500 fine to the federal government to apply for “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status, in addition to paying “assessed taxes, per adult applicant in addition to all applicable fees required to pay for the cost of processing the application.” At this time, details about how lawmakers would assess such taxes have not surfaced, and it is unclear what, if any, additional applicable fees would be required.

Such Registered Provision Immigrant status, the senate plan’s 17-page preview document says, would “last for a 6-year term that is renewable if the immigrant does not commit any acts that would render the alien deportable.”

After that initial six years, the document notes, “Another $500 penalty fee is applicable at this time.”

Then, after 10 years and after paying another $1,000 fine, the senate document says the Gang of Eight proposal will allow illegal immigrants to “adjust to Lawful Permanent Resident Status through the same Merit Based System everyone else must use to earn a green card.”

That translates to about $2,000 worth of fines total for each illegal immigrant to go through this 10-year plan–$200 per year, $16.67 per month. With a 40-hour work week, in which they would be working a total of 2,080 hours per year (in a 52-week work year), illegal immigrants would be paying only about 10 cents per hour to the federal government to buy legal status, or amnesty, under the “Gang of Eight” plan.