From The Hill writing about Tuesday's hearing before the House Social Security Subcommittee on future funding of Social Security benefits:
“The immigration surge, we project from 2021 to 2026, will result in about $1 trillion in additional revenue” over a ten year period, Dr. Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told lawmakers during a Tuesday hearing. ...
Republicans — including former president and presidential candidate Donald Trump — have increasingly pointed to immigration as a drain on social safety nets for the elderly in recent months, including Social Security and Medicare.
Top budgetary experts bucked those claims during Tuesday’s panel as they argued immigrants could have a positive impact on Social Security. ...
Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) pressed [Stephen] Goss [Social Security's Chief Actuary] on whether the SSA accounted for the “impact of illegal immigrants” in their yearly report.
“Absolutely, we always have,” Goss responded. “The bottom line really is that immigration of any form is actually a positive in the realm we are now where the birth rates in the country are as low as they are.” ...
Isn't it obvious that illegal immigrants help the Social Security trust funds? They contribute but can't get anything in return. Of course, this won't be obvious if you believe that illegal immigrants are just "given" Social Security benefits as soon as they arrive but, of course, that's a myth believed only by the credulous.
5 comments:
We live in an “alternative facts” society where flags are flown upside down. The United Stated is better than this.
Immigration does help the trust funds and society in general in many ways. But doesn't that show that perhaps we need to make changes to allow for more legal immigration? There's a cost to having people illegally use another's SSN as far as identity theft issues .
@10:40
There is not a financial cost to having people illegally use another SSN as to the trust funds. It's literally a boon. SSA is more than willing to accept money using a fraudulently obtained SSN, but they aren't as to paying benefits.
Also, illegal immigrants do not necessarily pay in using fraudulently obtained SSNs. Often, they use legally obtained ITINs. Employers then withhold/pay FICA taxes for their employee using the ITIN as opposed to using an SSN.
On the front end they help the ss trust funds. On the back end they hurt the funding because ss benefits are weighted in favor of low pay employees. They hurt the wages of lower paid employees by increasing the number of workers.
In this light, the growth of the Earnings Suspense File is a good thing. It records wages that can't be posted to anyone's Earnings record because we can't get an ID match (even a fuzzy match) with a person's ID data. Congress always viewed it as a problem, meaning why can't we attribute wages to an SSN holder. Generally, it's because the SSN is fraudulently being used, for example, by someone without their own SSN.
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