Endless suffering
July 7, 2021
My family and I – my wife, our young son, our elders, and the twin baby girls who will be born to us this week – ask the world to hear the conditions of our lives here in Deir el Balah, after 14 years’ captivity in the world’s largest toxic prison-camp, and since the May waves of Israeli tank shells, artillery shells, rockets and bombs have stopped exploding in our midst.
In some ways this calm is harder than open war. Right now, war continues in the dispossessions of our cousins from the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Here, most of the Gaza Strip’s assets, infrastructure and services are in catastrophic ruins. So, there is almost no water fit for drinking, washing, or just cooling off in this season’s volcanic record heat, no water that will not rot our teeth and ruin our stomachs, almost no water for the vegetable gardens that keep us barely alive. With luck, we have 8 hours of daily electricity even to pump it into household holdin
 for an appointment.
“Tax Law and the Undocumented” was one of the less-popular choices on our glorious Readerpalooza poll, but it’s tax time, and we want to make sure this information is out there, because someone really needs it. (Our motto here at Statutes of Liberty is “Decreasing Needless Suffering: It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought.”)
So, it’s time for a Q&A between our imaginary interviewer, Cosell, and our non-imaginary founding partner.
Cosell: Let’s cut to the chase. Do illegal immigrants undocumented people, what-have-you do they have to pay taxes?
Montana: Yes. Paying taxes on U.S. income is required under federal law whether you are here legally or illegally.