Title: Do Seniors on Social Security Have to Pay for Medicare While 'Illegal Immigrants' Get It Free? | Snopes.com
Headings: Do Seniors on Social Security Have to Pay for Medicare While ‘Illegal Immigrants’ Get It Free?
Do Seniors on Social Security Have to Pay for Medicare While ‘Illegal Immigrants’ Get It Free?
It's a familiar trope on the internet but remains factually challenged.
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In May and June 2019, a misleading but widely seen meme about immigrants and Medicare benefits continued to circulate on Facebook: Although the trope that undocumented immigrants are cashing in on U.S. government-funded public benefits for free is a common one, it’s generally misleading. Contrary to what the meme asserts, undocumented persons do not qualify to receive Medicare. Additionally, because many undocumented persons acquire fake Social Security numbers so that they can work, they pay billions of dollars into the system but never reap those benefits, said Steven Wallace, professor of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, and associate director of UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research. “In reality, undocumented immigrants paying into these programs actually are helping to subsidize them,” Wallace told us by phone. “ So it’s the other way around — it’s not that they’re draining the system. They’re actually subsidizing it.”