Repercussions of Immigration Discrimination in Accounting Practices

Most people pay taxes in the United States, a lot of those people, are illegal immigrants, who, due to the lack of due process have succumbed to paying taxes without record of their funding to the government. Many people who are considered illegal in the United States are actually very much law-abiding citizens, who have been delegated to low level positions of labor, construction and housekeeping chores.

In my early years of experience in tax preparation services to the community, I encountered many wild situations in which taxpayers were submitting their tax returns, but their returns were not considered legitimate. I consider this situation racist and unfair, unfair to communities of Latin American descent. I was lucky enough to have arrived in the United States with a student Visa, which pretty soon turned into a green or resident card and eventually, my status became that of an American citizen.

I find that many issues in the accounting profession deal with ethics, but those ethics are curtailed because ethics do not actually exist, because if they existed, immigrants who pay taxes would be included in the due process of tax law, but they are not, they are dismissed and accounted as numbers that can be blamed for all the problems that the United States has.

Many immigrants without papers lack the possibility of employment that is fair, indiscriminatory and pretty much dignified in a country that supposedly values people and equality. I believe that in the accounting profession, we must look at ourselves as officials of ethics and as people who speak up when there are ethics at state. I believe in a future in which everyone counts as equal, no matter their immigration status.

Tax fraud will always exist, but the best way to tackle this problem, is not by blaming the people at the bottom, the undocumented immigrants, but those who exploit us, those who command our services without pay or benefits. There is only so much that the immigration community can do without the help of the public and of the accounting community to overcome problems that are important to highlight.

Kathy Hochul, governor of New York State, has a big job in which she must include people of all colors, including those from Latin America. My voice stands with people who have suffered enough at the hands of autocracy and oligarchy, if we do not speak for us, nobody else will.

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