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For those HD readers that want to know about the future of two of our biggest entitlement programs.
A new study from the Cato Institute about who pays more in Social Security and Medicare taxes than actually receives in benefits that has resulted in a $1.7 trillion benefit to those two programs. Listen or read the piece on Markeplace.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/02/23/immigrants-reduce-deficits-study-shows
I had a 401(k) plan customer about 25 years ago who called me with an unusual question. It was a company in NJ that hired immigrants from Haiti and Puerto Rico. They provided burlap products to the landscaping industry. It was backbreaking work. She told me that a long-time employee approached her to say he had become an American citizen after being here over 20 years. When he gave her his paperwork and SS number she realized he had been using someone else’s name and number for all that time. She asked what to do. I referred her question and ultimately all they told her to do was sign him up as a new employee with the correct name and SS number and ignore the past 20 years. She complied and never heard from any government agency while I was involved. Crazy, right?
Pretty unfortunate for the worker too who will get no credit for those 20 years of taxes paid. Although it may be possible to link the records of earnings. Frankly, I think that would be fair.
According to the piece, “the biggest finding is that immigrants have generated a cumulative $14.5 trillion, in real 2024 dollars, in deficit reductions over the last 30 years. If you look at just illegal immigrants, their net benefit, it’s about $1.7 trillion. And what’s really going on there is that illegal immigrants are largely excluded from the biggest public benefits programs — and those are Social Security and Medicare.”
So one can come to the conclusion that without immigration, legal or illegal, our national debt would be over $50 trillion.
And our SS and Medicare would be in worse shape too. The effort to remove the undocumented will have many economic consequences we don’t seem to talk about.