National Center for Policy Analysis

Immigration Issues
May 31, 2007

AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS WOULD BANKRUPT SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM

A domestic policy scholar says the U.S. Social Security system will surely go bankrupt if President Bush and members of Congress who are pushing amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants have their way.

According to Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation:

The so-called "comprehensive immigration reform plan" making its way through Congress would add millions of additional workers to the Social Security rolls.

With $18,000 in annual Social Security benefits over a 20-year retirement period, each new amnestied worker would receive over $300,000 in retirement benefits.

If an estimated nine million adults join the system, that would result in a total cost of $2.5 trillion for all the new beneficiaries.

"And that cost is going to come crashing into the Social Security System at exactly the time that Social Security is already going bankrupt," he emphasizes.

Rector contends the president and members of Congress really do not care because those costs will not hit for another 10 to 15 years.

Source: Chad Groening, "Amnesty for illegals would bankrupt Social Security system, says analyst," OneNewsNow.com, May 30, 2007; based upon: Robert E. Rector, "The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to State and Local Taxpayers," Statement Before the Subcommittee on Immigration of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States House of Representatives, May 17, 2007.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=14609