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Undocumented Immigrants Throng to Receive Help Filing Taxes

By Amy Isackson / Border Reporter,  KPBS Public Broadcasting
Published April 16, 2007 at 4:30 PM PDT
This story was published more than 17 years ago.

At a non-profit social services office in North Park, there aren't enough seats to accommodate everyone who's come to get help filing their taxes. People perch on beat-up desks at the ACORN office or

Undocumented Immigrants Throng to Receive Help Filing Taxes

At a non-profit social services office in North Park, there aren't enough seats to accommodate everyone who's come to get help filing their taxes. People perch on beat-up desks at the ACORN office or stand.

Office manager Victoria Samaha attributes the increase in the number of undocumented immigrants filing to two things: refunds…

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Samaha : And they are concerned that if they are going to apply for some kind of legalization in the future that they can prove they are paying their taxes.

Many of the immigration reform proposals Congress is discussing list paying taxes as a step toward amnesty.

Undocumented immigrants can file a tax return using an individual taxpayer ID number, or ITIN.

More than one-and-a-half million ITINs were assigned last year. That's up about 80 percent since 2004.

In 2005, the number of non-citizens who filed taxes jumped 30 percent, compared to the previous year to about two million.

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Amy Isackson, KPBS News.

Amy Isackson
Amy Isackson was the border reporter at KPBS from 2004 to 2011. She covered breaking news and feature stories on California-Mexico border issues and immigration, for local and national broadcast. Amy got her start in public radio by pitching a series of stories about rural New Zealand - horse dentistry and sheep sheering - to Radio New Zealand's "Country Life" program. She then worked with Peabody Award-winning radio producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, to help create the Sonic Memorial, a series of stories on the World Trade Center before, during and after 9/11. Amy's work has been recognized with awards from the Associated Press Television-Radio Association of California and Nevada, the California Chicano News Media Association, and the San Diego Press Club. She won the Sol Price Prize for Responsible Journalism in 2009 from the Society of Professional Journalists for her story about high school students smuggling people and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. Prior to venturing into the wonderful world of public radio, Amy worked for Yahoo! Inc. for nearly five years as an editorial surfer, associate producer and broadcast communications manager. She majored in Latin American History at Williams College. She grew up in San Diego and made frequent trips south of the border.
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