Immigration, Social Security and Logic at the Washington Post
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Friday, 03 September 2010 05:37 |
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The Post has an oped by Edward Schumacher touting the benefits that undocumented workers have provided for the Social Security system. Many pay taxes without ever collecting benefits.
While his numbers don't seem quite right (he claims that annual payouts would exceed tax revenue over the years 2011-2015 without the $12 billion estimated net contribution from undocumented workers, the trustees report shows taxes exceeded benefits by more than $15 billion in the years 2012-2014), the more important problem is with his logic.
Presumably the point of immigration reform measures would be to normalize the employment situation of immigrants so that the workers who are here are on the books, both paying required taxes and receiving the benefits to which they are entitled, like Social Security. If immigrants get the benefits to which they are entitled, then it will make the finances of Social Security somewhat worse.
In reality this is a trivial issue for the program, which is fully solvent for the next 29 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. An increase in the payroll tax of 0.16 percentage points would fully offset the cost of the payment of benefits to undocumented workers. However, it seems bizarre to advocate that immigrants be brought into the country to pay taxes to a program from which they get no benefit, as Mr. Schumacher seems to be doing.
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I don't disagree with the larger thrust of your article, but one justification of bringing illegals or undocumented workers into the system is two fold. First, it puts documented workers on par with undocumented workers, also, it gets them on the books, recorded so that people such as yourself know what's going on. As a gardener I know this all too well. For instance, they won't work for less than $10/hr. Since the most disadvantaged workers in the system have an actual minimum wage of $10/hr, shouldn't all Americans? This would also provide you ammunition against libertarians who fail to understand human nature and worry about minimum wages being too high. Politics such as it is, minimum wages will never be too high. Unless the magnetic poles shift and suddenly the poor, powerless minimum wage worker suddenly has the most powerful lobby in DC.
The justice of undocumented workers paying taxes they will never see the benefit of is not so terrible, they come here freely (and should be able to.) I'd support we let anyone in who wants in, just please sign in at the door. Obama missed the opportunity when asked about illegals with driver's licenses, should've said, "I don't care who gets a DL, so long as they're insured. I want to kick off an initiative to have bar code scanning of proof of insurance papers that would allow police to scan and know if insurance is current."