Dispensing with a new 'dagger' against immigration reform | Fox News

"According to the independent National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), immigrants will contribute $611 billion to the Social Security system over the next 75 years. Indeed, immigrants are a key force in keeping the Social Security trust fund solvent for older Americans who are at or near retirement. NFAP also found that halting all immigration into the United Size would explode the size of the Social Security deficit by at least 31 percent over 50 years.

Jeffrey S. Passel and Michael E. Fix, two respected demographers, recently compared the welfare participation rates of legal immigrants to native-born American citizens. Controlling for income, they found that immigrants had nearly identical -- and in some cases lower -- participation rates than citizens in the three big social programs: welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. They found that 32 percent of natural-born citizen families at the 200 percent poverty line received food stamps, compared to only 22 percent of immigrant families.

Their findings complement those of another pair of demographers, James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, for example, who found last year that immigrants actually receive less in Social Security and Medicare benefits than do native-born American citizens."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/19/dispensing-with-new-dagger-against-immigration-reform/#ixzz2LM7w7Lxx