By Nicole Goodkind
Stephen Goss, chief
actuary of the Social Security Administration estimates that 3.1 million illegal workers pay into Social Security each year. In 2010, undocumented workers and their employers paid $15 billion to Social Security with no intention of ever collecting benefits -- that year illegal workers only received $1 billion back.
How do working illegal immigrants pay in to and collect Social Security? Some are issued Social Security numbers with their temporary or student visas, others forge documents and were issued numbers by Social Security before they tightened their screening process in 2001, some steal numbers, and others simply make them up.
When workers pay Social Security under numbers that don’t match their names the administration sorts these into their “suspense” file. No one gets credit towards benefits for this money but the money does still go to the Social Security trust fund.
Related: Immigration Is an Economic Issue: Actress and Obama Campaign Co-Chair Eva Longoria
Over the course of many years, Goss estimates that a total of $150 billion in undocumented workers' money has flowed into the Social Security trust fund. That’s about 8% of the total
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