Vice
By Roy Germano
August 4, 2015
Unauthorized
workers are paying an estimated $13 billion a year in social security
taxes and only getting around $1 billion back, according to a senior
government statistician.
Stephen
Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA),
told VICE News that an estimated 7 million people are currently working
in the US illegally.
Of those, he estimates that about 3.1 million are using fake or expired
social security numbers, yet also paying automatic payroll taxes. Goss
believes that these workers pay an annual net contribution of $12
billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.
The
SSA estimates that unauthorized workers have paid a whopping $100
billion into the fund over the past decade. Yet as these people are in
the US illegally, it is unlikely
that they will be able to benefit from their contributions later in
life.
In
the latest episode of Immigrant America, VICE News documented how most
US dairy farms depend on the labor of unauthorized workers, as they
simply can’t find enough
Americans and don’t have a way of hiring foreign workers legally
Farmers
claim that they’re following the law the best they can under the
circumstances. Michael, a farm owner who asked for his last name to be
withheld, argued that his
unauthorized employees don’t get a free ride. He told VICE News that
they pay taxes and are hired in accordance with the government’s I-9
requirement.
Unauthorized
workers usually demonstrate their employment eligibility with fake IDs
and fake social security numbers. Once hired, these “questionably
documented” workers,
as Michael calls them, end up on the payroll and have taxes
automatically taken out of their checks, like any other employee. That
money then goes to the federal treasury to fund programs like Social
Security and Medicare.
You can read more about the SSA estimates of the unauthorized population’s contributions to the trust fund here.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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