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Immigrants Contribute Greatly to the Social Security Trust Fund’s Solvency
Immigrants are a critical part of the U.S. workforce and play a key role in strengthening Social Security’s finances. Like all other workers, immigrants contribute to the trust fund through payroll taxes. Even if they themselves will not become eligible to receive benefits in their lifetimes, immigrants improve the solvency of a program that provides almost all workers with a foundation of income for their retirement.
Since Social Security is a “pay-as-you-go” program, Social Security benefits paid out today are funded from payroll taxes collected from today’s workers, so more workers paying into the system benefits the program’s finances. In the United States, immigrants are more likely to be of working age and have higher rates of labor force participation, compared to U.S.-born individuals.
Without immigrants and their U.S.-born children, the prime working-age population (ages 25–54) would have shrunk by more than 8 million people between 2000 and 2023. Immigrants are also younger, on average, than U.S.-born individuals, meaning that they have more working years ahead of them before they are eligible to receive Social Security benefits.
The Social Security trustees’ report highlights how immigration improves the trust fund’s solvency. Social Security’s actuaries estimate the impact of immigration over 25, 50, and 75 years, showing in all time periods that as immigration increases, the trust fund deficit decreases. The Social Security Administration (SSA) assumes average net immigration of about 1.2 million people per year in its projections. Immigration higher than that level will help the trust fund balances as compared to the most recent estimates done in 2024, while lower-than-expected immigration will increase the funding shortfall.
For example, SSA estimates that if net immigration per year were roughly 400,000 more people than they assume, it would reduce the shortfall by about 11 percent, while lower immigration of a similar amount would have the opposite effect, worsening the trust fund balance (see chart). This suggests the Trump Administration’s plans to drastically cut immigration and increase deportations would significantly worsen Social Security’s financial outlook.
It is important to note that immigrants without a documented immigration status still pay payroll and income taxes, even though they rarely become eligible for Social Security benefits. In 2022, people without a documented status paid an estimated $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes. And a 2013 report by the Social Security actuaries concluded that earnings from immigrants without a documented status have a net positive effect on the Social Security trust fund, finding that they contributed a net $12 billion into the Social Security trust fund in 2010.
Despite the contributions that immigrants make to their local communities and economies, the Trump Administration has launched a mass deportation campaign and efforts to curtail lawful immigration. Administration officials have falsely blamed immigrants for worsening Social Security’s funding outlook, even though the opposite is the case.
Rather, the Administration’s policies of mass deportation (including of people who have been living and working in the U.S. lawfully and whose status is being revoked) will not only have huge personal consequences for people who are immigrants and their families, but will worsen Social Security’s finances, affecting all workers and beneficiaries. Furthermore, the misinformation about Social Security and immigrants’ contributions to the system weakens trust in a bedrock U.S. institution.
Social Security is already facing a funding shortfall in the next decade, with the program projected to have funds to pay about 83 percent of benefits in 2035 if nothing is done to shore up its financing structure. If Administration officials are serious about addressing Social Security’s funding challenges, they would offer real solutions, like a financing package that includes raising revenues to preserve Social Security’s crucial benefits, instead of scapegoating immigrants whose contributions are helping to preserve the program.