CMSOnAir | Roberto Suro on Tax Equality for Immigrants and Their Children

In the United States, 9.6 million children are living in poverty. Federal and state tax credits are among the most effective policy tools for fighting child poverty. However, nearly 2 million children – 1.6 million US citizens and 270,000 non-citizens – are living in poverty and are ineligible for these poverty-fighting tax credits because they have at least one undocumented parent.

In this episode of CMSOnAir, Roberto Suro explores this inequality and other findings from the paper, “Tax Equality for Immigrants: The Indispensable Ingredient for Remedying Child Poverty in the United States,” which he co-authored with Hannah Findling. At a moment when the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are pursuing substantial expansions of tax credits for working-poor families, an important question remains: Who will be eligible? 

This episode of CMSOnAir is part of a series featuring academics, policymakers, and advocates who have written for CMS’s Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS).