Illegals pay into SS "earnings suspense file" (but not recieve payout)

[rodeodance]

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/illegal-immigrants-are-bolstering-social/20050405090209990003

......Starting in the late 1980's, the Social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with incorrect - sometimes simply fictitious - Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the "earnings suspense file" in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.

The file has been mushrooming ever since: $189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's, two and a half times the amount of the 1980's.

In the current decade, the file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year, generating $6 billion to $7 billion in Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes.

In 2002 alone, the last year with figures released by the Social Security Administration, nine million W-2's with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, accounting for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages.

Social Security officials do not know what fraction of the suspense file corresponds to the earnings of illegal immigrants. But they suspect that the portion is significant.

"Our assumption is that about three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen C. Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, using the agency's term for illegal immigration.

Other researchers say illegal immigrants are the main contributors to the suspense file. "Illegal immigrants account for the vast majority of the suspense file," said Nick Theodore, the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Especially its growth over the 1990's, as more and more undocumented immigrants entered the work force."

[endarkenment]

1. Shhh......

Immigration, legal, illegal, or otherwise, is the best solution to the grey crisis in social security/medicare/medicaid funding. But don't tell anyone.

[sandnsea]

4. Exactly n/t

[SteppingRazor]

2. I love the euphemism "other-than-legal immigrants" ...

I can't imagine hearing anyone but a bureaucrat say that

[DURHAM D]

3. I am glad to know they are tracking these $$$

Many years ago I tried to have a conversation with my Dem Congressman about where these funds were going/if they were being tracked/etc. He was completely lost - could not understand what I was asking.

Tried again a few years later - he still could not comprehend the question - let alone provide an answer.

I wanted to know this info so I could counter attack the anti-immigration idiots in my family who kept saying the "Mexicans" were not paying taxes.

Perhaps I will send him a copy of this report.

[judaspriestess]

5. I wonder if this includes all the Tax ID numbers illegals

go to the IRS and apply for and get. Its form W-7. They are still illegal but the IRS knows who they are! These "itin" numbers issued by the government are used for payroll purposes also, to buy vehicles etc.