PRESIDIO — National headlines hit close to home during last week’s Presidio City Council meeting, when Gamaliel Bustillos Muñoz of the local Mexican Consulate gave a presentation about a provision in a federal tax bill that could add a 3.5% fee to all money that non-citizens send home — a practice sometimes called “remittances.” Bustillos anticipated that the measure could have a big impact in Far West Texas and Northern Chihuahua, where millions of people cross the border looking for work in industries like agriculture and fossil fuels.
At the end of May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a massive tax bill — affectionately referred to by President Trump and his allies as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — that could have massive implications for the borderlands. Apart from the remittance tax, the Big Beautiful Bill could more than double the size of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement police force and fund “900 miles of river barriers” in a state hemmed in by 1,200 miles of the Rio Grande.
Consul Bustillos’ office serves 14 counties in Far West Texas and serves nearly 150,000 Mexicans who call this part of the border home. “The Mexican community in the United States is big, and one of their most important contributions to the economy here is that they spend most of their income here in the United States,” Bustillos said.
Bustillos went on to explain that Mexican nationals working in the United States spend about 80% of their income on this side of the border, and the other 20% goes to support family members back home. That money — about $66.2 billion dollars in 2023 — represents about 4% of Mexico’s total GDP. “Mexican people, especially in the rural areas, live on remittances,” Bustillos explained.
Experts worry that if remittances are taxed or overly regulated, folks will abandon legal means of sending money abroad. “They might use alternative ways like carrying cash through the border, which is going to be even more dangerous for this specific area,” Bustillos said.
The tax is mainly intended to impact undocumented immigrants. If the bill goes through the Senate unchanged, the tax will apply to green card holders, though Bustillos said a credit may be available to folks that have been issued social security numbers.
Across all races and nationalities, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes into the American economy in 2023. In the state of Texas alone, that number was $4.87 billion.
The impact isn’t just purely financial. The presentation included data collected by the office of Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, which suggested that immigrants have grown the American workforce in the new millennium by having 8 million U.S.-born children.
In a year where anti-immigrant rhetoric has dominated political discussion, Bustillos hoped that Congress could adopt a more measured approach. “In the big picture, if they start taxing the Mexican community, it’s probably going to be harmful and dangerous for both countries,” he said.