"Immigration and Social Security"

[applegrove]

Immigration and Social Security

By SHAILA DEWAN at the NY Times

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/immigration-and-social-security/?ref=politics

"SNIP...............................


The Social Security Administration says that the immigration bill passed by the Senate would help its coffers, adding $276 billion in revenue over the next 10 years while costing only $33 billion.

But 10 years is a short time when you consider that a vast majority of the new and newly legalized immigrants would be paying into the system during that period and drawing out their Social Security benefits later. That is the problem with attempts to determine the effect of immigration on Social Security in the long haul — every study is going to have some sort of end point, after which people who have paid in are going to start drawing out.

The Social Security Administration’s chief actuary, Stephen C. Goss, says he believes that even 75 years out, there will be a net gain from immigrants, as he wrote in May. That is because their withdrawals will be offset by their children’s contributions.

Such estimates are based on a lot of assumptions, says Paul N. Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, like how many children the newcomers are likely to have (higher birth rates among immigrants taper off with time), how many are low-skilled versus high-skilled (low-skilled workers tend to cost the system more, while high-skilled workers pay in more than they get out) and just how many new immigrants are admitted under the bill, all of which are open questions.


.............................SNIP"

[Recursion]

1. Amnesty "solves" the Social Security "problem" for several decades

But that's a difficult sell to the public.