Fixing Social Security funding woes requires addressing immigration ‘fraud,' Vance said. Here's what experts say

• Social Security and Medicare face pressures to support a large baby boomer population as they retire.
• In a recent CNBC appearance, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said tackling what he called "massive" benefit fraud by undocumented immigrants should be a high priority.
• But addressing the programs' looming trust fund depletion dates is a bigger problem, one expert says.

Many voters ages 50 and up say two issues — Social Security and Medicare — could decide how they cast their ballots this November.

The presidential candidate who wins on Nov. 5 — either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris — may be tasked with restoring solvency to those programs as they face looming trust fund depletion dates.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, in a Sept. 12 interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box," said that first addressing another issue, immigration, could help the programs' funding woes.

Vance said Social Security and Medicare are facing a "massive fraud problem" because of undocumented immigrants who are collecting benefits, citing what he said were incidents of fraud related to him by some of his constituents and friends.

"Before we start talking about doing anything to the benefits for Americans who have earned them, let's deal with the illegal alien fraud in our Social Security and Medicare system," Vance said. "I think that costs us a lot of money."

It's not the first time the Trump-Vance campaign has suggested immigration is hurting the programs that millions of retirees rely on for monthly benefit checks and health-care coverage.

Trump in March said on social media platform Truth Social that Democrats are "killing Social Security and Medicare by allowing the invasion of the migrants."

Meanwhile, Harris has talked about creating an "earned pathway to citizenship," which may encourage immigrants to work and contribute to the programs. The Harris campaign did not provide CNBC more details on those plans.

Who is eligible to benefit from Social Security?

The Social Security Administration assigns a unique Social Security number to each individual who is either a U.S. citizen, is lawfully admitted to the country as a permanent resident, is lawfully admitted on a temporary basis with Department of Homeland Security authorization to work, or has a valid non-work reason for needing a Social Security number, according to the agency.

A Social Security number is required for most jobs in the U.S., and employers are typically required to deduct payroll taxes from each employee to fund programs including Social Security and Medicare.

Over many years of work, the employee usually contributes a sufficient amount to be eligible to claim monthly Social Security checks and Medicare benefits when they retire or become disabled.

Documented immigrants — such as those with permanent status and dual intent temporary visas — pay the payroll taxes that contribute to Social Security and Medicare, according to Tara Watson, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of the book "The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear."

Generally, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits, Watson said, but they may pay in to the programs anyway.

Some undocumented immigrants may use false Social Security numbers to work in jobs that require payroll tax contributions to Social Security and Medicare, and therefore they unofficially contribute to those programs, she said. Others, such as seasonal workers, may not pay payroll taxes.

Many long-term immigrants do receive benefits after contributing to the programs and earning eligibility, Watson said. Immigrants may eventually qualify for Social Security benefits if they are present in the U.S. lawfully and earn the required credits by working and contributing to the program, according to the American Academy of Actuaries.

Undocumented immigrants contributed $33.9 billion in federal social insurance taxes in 2022 toward Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Yet because of their immigration status, those workers are barred from accessing those benefits.

How widespread is Social Security fraud?

There are two common types of Social Security fraud involving immigration: When people who aren't eligible for a Social Security number either steal one or create a false one so they can try to get a job in the U.S., and when people who aren't eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits use a fraudulent name or Social Security number to claim benefit payments.

Committing these kinds of fraud isn't easy. 

But it is possible for some people, including some undocumented immigrants, to carry it out.

Stealing benefits can be difficult, since it requires tapping into someone's Social Security account and changing their bank account information to access the money, according to Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former principal deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration.

After the Social Security Administration started allowing individuals to change their bank deposit information through their online accounts, the agency and the Office of Inspector General began receiving complaints of unauthorized changes, Jeffrey Brown, deputy assistant inspector general at the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, told the House Ways and Means Committee in 2023.

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Audits found $33.5 million in benefits for 20,878 beneficiaries was redirected through unauthorized direct deposit changes between January 2013 and May 2018, according to Brown. However, another $23.9 million for 19,662 beneficiaries was prevented from misdirection by the agency before payments were made.

The investigation, from a 2019 report, did not implicate undocumented immigrants in that activity.

"Our audits found fraudsters may steal identities to work or to claim earnings-related benefits," Brown said in his written testimony, which did not give demographic information on those committing the fraud.

There have been cases of undocumented immigrants found to be misusing Social Security numbers to fraudulently access benefits.

"There are certainly some immigrants who are getting benefits when they shouldn't be, but I think it's a relatively small group of them," Watson said.

"This is not a problem that I've heard specifically that, as [Vance] says, is widespread," Biggs said, referring to Vance's comments about social services fraud by undocumented immigrants.

What happens to unclaimed earnings?

The type of fraud in which Social Security numbers can be misused for work purposes may be more common, experts say.

When someone is working using a Social Security number that isn't theirs, their earnings may be credited to the person whose name matches that number in the agency's records.

Alternatively, they may be credited to the Social Security Administration's earnings suspense file.

The earnings suspense file is an electronic holding file for wage items where names and Social Security numbers on Form W-2s do not match the Social Security Administration's records, an agency spokesperson said via email.

The wage records stay in that file until they can be verified and matched to a worker's record. Despite the wage records' unidentified status, the program's trust funds have received revenues for the wage items placed in the suspense file, the spokesperson said.

A 2023 report from the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General showed the earnings suspense file had accumulated $2.15 trillion in wages for tax years 1937 through 2022.

The earnings suspense file includes undocumented immigrants, among other people, Watson said.

She said the existence of the earnings suspense file "gives you an indication that people are putting into the system and not claiming from the system."

Immigrants in the labor market 'very much a positive'

Immigration overall is a net positive to Social Security and Medicare, experts say.

Both programs rely on funding from payroll taxes. The experts say that more immigrants means more workers who contribute to both Social Security and Medicare through their paychecks.

"Immigration, in general, has a very positive role," said Sam Gutterman, chairperson of the American Academy of Actuaries' Social Security committee.

Neither the Social Security Administration nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, provided recent data on the effect of undocumented immigrants on their programs.

When asked about Vance's statement that undocumented workers are draining Medicare and Social Security, HHS spokesperson Renata Miller said: "These claims are false and they serve as a distraction from the health care concerns that everyday Americans care about. HHS will continue working to lower health care costs so that patients can fill a prescription without rationing pills or going into medical debt."

The Social Security Administration in an email explained that there are strict rules about who can legally receive benefits and Social Security numbers.

"The Social Security Act does not permit payment of benefits to noncitizens residing in the U.S. if they're not lawfully present here," a Social Security spokesperson said. "In order to get a Social Security number for work, by law you need to be a U.S. citizen or have [Department of Homeland Security] authorization. SSA has stringent evidentiary requirements to confirm the authenticity of documents and prevent issuance of numbers to ineligible individuals."

In a 2013 report, the Social Security Administration said it is difficult to precisely identify the total amount of taxes paid and benefits that may have been received by unauthorized workers.

In that report, the office of the program's chief actuary said undocumented immigrants paid as much as $13 billion in payroll taxes to the program's trust funds in 2010, while about $1 billion in benefit payments were attributed to unauthorized work. That resulted in a contribution of roughly $12 billion to the program's cash flow that year, according to the agency.

"We estimate that earnings by unauthorized immigrants result in a net positive effect on Social Security financial status generally," the office of SSA's chief actuary said.

"We estimate that future years will experience a continuation of this positive impact on the trust funds," it wrote.

More recently, the Social Security Administration has said immigration tends to be beneficial for the program because those new entrants to the country tend to be working age.

"When they come to the country, they tend to come here for economic opportunity and enter the labor force, and that's very much a positive," Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said in testimony before the House Budget Committee in June.

"That actually helps us with having more revenue coming in," Goss said.

Those workers may eventually work the length of time necessary to qualify for benefits, Goss said.

However, some immigrants pay into the program and never collect benefits, he explained.

And if they have children, that helps to make up for the country's low birth rate, which also benefits the program, Goss added.

Looming depletion dates are the more pressing issue

In a new report, the American Academy of Actuaries found immigration may "significantly enhance the future financial condition of Social Security, especially in the long term." The report says immigration may help improve the worker-to-beneficiary ratio and slightly delay the depletion of the program's trust funds.

However, immigration is "not a silver bullet to 'solve' 100% of Social Security's financial problems," according to the research, which analyzed the Social Security Administration's latest annual trustees report.

Both Social Security and Medicare face pressures as the large baby boomer generation retires and taps the programs for benefits.

Absent action from Congress, the trust fund Social Security relies on to pay for retirement benefits is due to run out in 2033, when 79% of benefits will be payable, according to projections from the program's trustees.

Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund, also known as Part A, is projected to last until 2036, when 89% of benefits will be payable.

Biggs said the presidential campaigns should focus on policies to address those looming depletion dates that will prompt across-the-board benefit cuts, rather than fraud by undocumented immigrants, which is a much smaller issue for the programs.

Focusing on the undocumented immigrant angle first is a "total sideshow" when it comes to the larger Social Security and Medicare funding issues, Biggs said.

"I think he [Vance] is using it as a deflection because they don't want to talk about fixing Social Security," Biggs said.