The NYT argued this morning that immigration, and especially illegal immigration, "saved" Social Security. The argument is that immigrants increase the size of the working population relative to the retired population, thereby increasing revenue relative to payouts. With illegal immigrants we get the added bonus that most never collect the benefits that they paid for. Well, this is a really bizarre way to view immigration. Certainly immigration can have a marginally positive effect on Social Security's solvency, but given that the latest projections from President Bush's trustees show the program to be fully solvent for more thirty years and the projections from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show it to be fully solvent for almost forty years, it just doesn't seem that we need worry about the marginal impact of immigration on the program's finances. Immigration has much larger effects on labor markets and pollution and congestion. These issues should dominate concerns about immigration, as well as the impact that immigration has on the countries of origin. The impact on Social Security is so trivial by comparison, that it is hardly worth mentioning in a debate over immigration -- and we certainly should not be trying to keep the program solvent by stealing benefits from workers who are not in the country legally.
--Dean Baker