How Immigrants Will Save Social Security
Illegal immigrants have already paid about $1 trillion into social security. And that’s helping the system stay afloat.
Contrary to the myth advanced by opponents of reform that illegal immigrants don’t contribute their fair share in taxes, and drain government benefits, the reality is that undocumented workers are helping to keep the social security trust fund in the black. They do this because they are paying into the system typically with false social security numbers, which means they will never collect benefits. Their money, often collected for many years, helps keep the system afloat and benefits flowing to aging baby boomers.<snip>
This is not an insignificant amount of money. When payroll contributions cannot be credited to a verifiable number, they go into what’s called the “Earnings Suspense File.” A study that was done last year by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, found that this file is estimated to have accumulated one trillion dollars worth of tax contributions.
Not all of that “unmatched money” is from illegal workers, says Marshall Fitz with CAP, but he felt comfortable saying, “A significant portion of that suspense file has been funded through undocumented workers who currently will never see those benefits.”
Here’s how the math works. Five percent of the U.S. work force is undocumented, which is some 8.1 million people. Thirty-eight percent of the 8.1 million pay social security taxes, which comes to roughly $12 billion a year, according to CAP estimates. That’s a pretty nice cushion for a graying America.
Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told the Daily Beast, “Even as it stands under current policy, unauthorized immigrants contribute positively to the financing of social security not only in terms of their own contributions, but in the succeeding generations when they have children on our soil that are citizens from day one.”