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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.