Donald Trump’s false claim that immigration hurts Social Security

At a recent campaign rally, former President Donald Trump fused two high-profile subjects into one explosive claim: the Social Security program, which older Americans rely on for retirement benefits, and the flow of migrants into the United States.

"Your Social Security will be destroyed by the people coming in. There's too many of them. It's not sustainable," he said March 16 in Vandalia, Ohio.

Social Security’s trust fund is projected to run dry in about a decade, which would prompt large-scale, across-the-board cuts.

But however someone views immigration, saying it will hurt Social Security’s fiscal viability, as Trump did, is questionable. To keep Social Security fiscally sustainable, few developments would be as helpful as seeing high rates of immigration.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to inquiries for this article.

The key threat to Social Security’s long-term viability is a shortage of workers feeding their tax dollars into the system, alongside a growing number of retirement-age Americans qualifying to receive benefits.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration established Social Security in 1935. As life expectancy has risen, so, too, has the number of eligible recipients. But as the baby boom generation has increasingly shifted into retirement, fewer workers are paying into the system. 

In 2000, there were 3.4 workers paying into Social Security for every retiree drawing benefits. By 2010, that had fallen to 2.9 workers per beneficiary. By 2020, it was 2.7. And by 2030, it’s expected to be 2.5.

One way to improve the worker-to-beneficiary ratio is to have higher rates of immigration.

"In general, adding to the immigration rate operates in somewhat the same way as an increase in the birth rate," said Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "A higher rate of immigration is generally good for Social Security because it increases the number of workers supporting each beneficiary."

Typically, immigrants who are legally qualified to work can receive Social Security retirement benefits after they’ve worked and paid Social Security taxes for 10 years. So, for at least 10 years, this immigrant will be paying into the system before they draw any benefits. Immigrants in the U.S. illegally cannot receive Social Security retirement benefits.

Most immigrants in the country legally will be paying into Social Security for much longer than 10 years, as long as they arrive in the United States before they are in their mid-50s.

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Many of those immigrants will eventually draw from Social Security. But not all will; some will return to their country of origin before completing the 10 years, essentially gifting their Social Security taxes to the trust fund. 

Even many immigrants who are in the United States illegally pay taxes. Sometimes, this consists of money withheld from their paycheck, a portion of which is earmarked for Social Security. (Such paycheck withholding may come from workers who submit fake Social Security numbers.) In other cases, an undocumented immigrant will file a tax return using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number rather than a Social Security number.

Estimates have found that immigrants without legal status pay billions of dollars in Social Security taxes annually without drawing benefits, now or ever.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank favoring low immigration levels, argued in a 2023 paper that higher immigration levels offer pluses and minuses for Social Security.

The paper says the degree of benefit for the program depends on the mix of younger and older immigrants coming to the U.S., as well as whether newcomers have advanced skills or not and how many children the immigrants have.

The paper also argues that much depends on whether the government decides to loosen rules governing who can receive Social Security benefits. 

"Illegal immigrants benefit the system as long as they remain illegal," Jason Richwine, who wrote the Center for Immigration Studies paper, told PolitiFact. "Any legalization or amnesty would reverse those gains and create major costs instead."

Steuerle cautioned that rising immigration levels would not by itself solve all of Social Security’s fiscal challenges. "It would take a great deal of immigration" to do that, he said.

Richwine agreed. "The long-term fiscal imbalance can be eliminated only through some combination of benefit cuts and tax increases," he said. "That's the painful fact of the matter."

Trump said, "Your Social Security will be destroyed by the people coming in. There's too many of them. It's not sustainable."

However someone views immigration’s value, Trump is wrong about the relationship between immigrants and Social Security.

Social Security’s fiscal challenges stem from a shortage of workers compared with beneficiaries. Though immigration alone won’t make the program’s solvent, it would increase the worker-to-beneficiary ratio, potentially for decades, thus extending the program’s fiscal life.

We rate the statement False.