There is a story about immigrants and Social Security that gets told with total confidence and total inaccuracy: that people here illegally are draining the fund millions of retirees depend on. The arithmetic runs the other way, and it is not close. Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars into Social Security every year through payroll taxes, and they are barred by law from ever collecting a benefit. They are not a drain on the system. They are one of the things holding it up.
The money going in
Start with what comes out of their paychecks. Unauthorized immigrants paid an estimated $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes in 2022, and about $26.2 billion in 2023, typically while working under a borrowed or invalid Social Security number as their employer withholds the tax like any other. [2] That money lands in the same trust fund that pays everyone else's benefits. The contribution is real even when the number on the W-2 is not.
The benefits they cannot get
Now follow the money that never comes back. The Social Security Administration cannot legally pay benefits to someone who is not lawfully present, and taxes paid under a fake number do not build a valid earnings record to claim against. [1][2] So the payments flow in and stop. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the recent rise in immigration will add about $348 billion to Social Security's revenues between 2024 and 2034, while those same immigrants collect roughly $1 billion back. [3]
Data
| Paid in | 348 |
|---|---|
| Collected back | 1 |
What the program's own actuary says
You do not have to take an advocate's word for the direction. The Social Security Administration's own Chief Actuary studied the question and put it plainly: the presence of unauthorized workers in the United States has, on average, a positive effect on the financial status of the program. [1] That is the government's in-house number-cruncher, not an immigration group, saying the people the story blames are the people subsidizing it. A program with a real financing gap is being quietly shored up by workers who will never see a check from it. [4]
The honest version is uncomfortable for the story, which is probably why the story avoids it. Undocumented immigrants are not taking Social Security from anyone. They are paying into a system that has promised them nothing back, and the only people who lose if they stop are the retirees counting on the money. [1][3] The claim is not just wrong. It is backward.
