An editorial today is the Journal’s latest open-borders hokum, regurgitating a libertarian think-tank report claiming that immigration bolsters Social Security. Now, I don’t blame Stuart Anderson, head of the think tank and former INS appointee, for his gullibility in taking the data at face value, but the Journal claims to be statistically and economically literate, even sneering in the editorial at “anti-immigration Republican lawmakers who claim to know something about labor markets.” (Hey, at least “anti-immigration” is an improvement over “anti-immigrant”!)

My research director, Steve Camarota, has something in the pipeline on this, but a few points: Even if the Social Security Administration estimates are correct, the boost from immigration would be trivial – less than one percent of expenditures over the next 75 years. But the estimates are flawed, assuming as they do that immigrant earnings and tax payments are the same as natives’ from day one – when even a high-immigration think tank like the Urban Institute has found that immigrants pay only 85 percent as much in Social Security taxes as natives. The estimates also assume that immigrants use Supplemental Security Income, SSI, at the same rate as natives, whereas research shows legal immigrant use of the program is 25 to 50 percent higher. It’s also important to note that legal immigrants are twice as likely as natives to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the EITC was established, according to the IRS, specifically to “offset the burden of social security taxes” on low-wage workers.

This Social Security fantasizing by the high-immigration folks is the public policy equivalent of cold fusion. You just can’t fund a welfare state with large numbers of low-income taxpayers, or, in Milton Friedman’s words, “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”