Undocumented workers bring in 13 billion/year to SS. They never receive any benefits.

[Maraya1969]

I went to a gathering with a lot of Mexicans recently and was told that when they work money is taken out of their pay but they never get any benefits from it. Can you imagine paying in all that money and never getting Medicare when you retire? Then I asked a good friend and found out she is undocumented also. She works really hard but has no savings.

I wonder what these people do when they are supposed to retire but have no income?

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If all undocumented immigrants were deported today, next year’s Social Security trust funds would have approximately $13 billion less for benefit payouts. It’s a considerable loss of dollars, especially when it’s projected that the Social Security funds will be depleted by 2034.

According to New American Economy, undocumented immigrants contributed $13 billion into the Social Security funds in 2016 and $3 billion to Medicare. Three years prior, the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration, Stephen Goss, wrote a report that estimated undocumented immigrants contributed $12 billion into Social Security.

Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S. with no legal authorization to work, yet an estimated 8 million do, both on and off the books. Since undocumented immigrants don’t have Social Security numbers and are not authorized to work legally in the U.S., they are not eligible for any Social Security benefits, whether they’ve paid into the system or not.

How undocumented immigrants pay into Social Security

Payroll tax, the 12 percent tax taken out of salaried workers’ paychecks, split between employer and employee, primarily funds Social Security, accounting for 88 percent of the payouts in 2017. Undocumented workers typically use a fake SSN or someone else’s SSN when applying for salaried jobs. Only a handful of U.S. states require employers to check an employee’s eligibility and their SSN through E-Verify, a Department of Homeland Security database. Other states have varying levels of E-Verify requirements, from partial to none.


https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/28/undocumented-immigrants-quietly-pay-billions-social-security-and-receive-no/

[Chainfire]

1. That is the truth.

I have argued that those points until I was blue in the face with my fellow construction workers, but they insisted that the "Mexicans" were getting a free ride. Nothing is further from the truth. (It mattered not what country they were from, they were all Mexicans.)

On the big commercial jobs that I worked on, if an undocumented alien was injured, his fellow workers would whisk him off the job to private or home treatment. Anything to avoid contact with the government. Of course, their employers couldn't have been happier to not have the WC claim.

[70sEraVet]

2. Good, well-balanced article. Thanks

[MichMan]

3. What are the criminal consequences of using fraudulent or stolen SS documents?

Is that considered a form of identity theft?

[Maraya1969]

5. I remember a story of a woman who had kids being shipped back to wherever because she used

a fake SS number. It was horrifying.

My dad came here from Canada and used a fake SS number for years. Eventually he became legally and a citizen. But people do what they have to do.

[grantcart]

4. Seems low to me but glad to see it in print

This is the first point I make to anyone who complains about undocumented workers.