Keep on Spinning, Immigration Amnesty Advocates

Great news, reports the New York Times! Immigrants are a net surplus for Medicare:

The study, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, measured immigrants’ contributions to the part of Medicare that pays for hospital care, a trust fund that accounts for nearly half of the federal program’s revenue. It found that immigrants generated surpluses totaling $115 billion from 2002 to 2009. In comparison, the American-born population incurred a deficit of $28 billion over the same period. ...

Individual immigrant contributions were roughly the same as those of American citizens, the study found, but immigrants as a group received less than they paid in, largely because they were younger on average than the American-born population and fewer of them were old enough to be eligible for benefits. The median age of Hispanics, whose foreign-born contingent is by far the largest immigrant group, is 27, according to the Brookings Institution. The median age of whites in the United States is 42.

Except for a teensy little caveat:

It was not clear how much of the surplus was made up of earnings by immigrants in the country illegally, who are ineligible for most government programs.

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Justin Green

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