In an election year, Immigration and its impact on our economy are top of mind for many voters, especially as Republican nominees criticize the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis.

But a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economy finds that the immigrant community contributes more than $1 billion in state and local taxes each year in New Jersey alone.

Raven Santana spoke to the coauthor of the study, as well as Immigrant Advocates.

About the findings.

Pertaining to a system that is not investing in them.

According to a new report in New Jersey, there were nearly 430,000 undocumented immigrants that contributed $1.3 billion in local and state taxes in 2020 to the six highest amount in the nation.

The report from left leaning think tank Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy found that more than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants goes towards state programs and benefits they are barred from accessing.

My parents are undocumented immigrants.

They file their taxes every year and they pay taxes and they have no benefit.

They are ineligible for Social Security, Medicare, or any federal program, but they are paying taxes into it.

Not being able to access these benefits is a reality that Erika Cruz Morales knows firsthand.

The policy and advocacy manager at NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice says this is personal to him as he hasn't just watched his parents deal with hardships.

He says he has experienced them, too.

I'm a doctor, a CPA, and I pay federal and state taxes, but I'm ineligible for any type of federal program as well.

And I don't think I'll ever see that those contributions in the future for me.

Undocumented immigrants pay taxes.

They help contribute via income in payroll taxes to our social safety net programs that they are barred from using like Social Security, which they contributed $25.7 billion to Medicare, which they contributed $6.4 billion to, and unemployment insurance, which they contributed $1.8 billion.

Marco Guzman is the senior state policy analyst at Itep and coauthor of this study.

He says the data is a reminder that on documented immigrants are vital to communities.

In this report, we do model a scenario where undocumented immigrants are given permanent legal status or work authorization without work authorization.

And we do see that, you know, their contributions and they're already contributing a lot.

Right now, we we see those contributions increase even more under that scenario.

That pales in comparison to what our report found, which was over $7 billion in expenses that, you know, each illegal immigrant.

You know, it combined to the New Jersey budget is is affecting.

Assemblyman Paul Kanitra called the numbers in the study questionable at best can each or released his own findings in a report which found that nearly one in ten residents entered the country illegally and received roughly $8,000 a year in various taxpayer funded benefits.

The more benefits that we give out, the more people that will come here illegally, the more people that will die crossing deserts and crossing rivers to get here illegally.

If you want to fix the problem, you can look at legal immigration reform.

You can look at actually making the process a little bit easier.

You can make it take a little bit less time and you can do it the right way so that people start off their relationship properly in the United States.

If your first act coming to the United States is to break our laws, obviously you don't have respect for our laws.

Assemblyman Kanitra says he wants to stop funding legal costs to stop deportation.

Meanwhile, advocates now hope to use eye tests, data to support legislation to allow undocumented immigrants access to state benefits.

For NJ spotlight News.

I'm Raven Santana.