Allan Sloan: Reader Questions and Comments About Social Security

I was snowed under by e-mail from readers of the Social Security article I wrote last month, which appeared online just as I was starting my vacation and in print a few days later. I didn't have access to reader e-mail at the beach, and I've just now caught up with all my Social Security mail. I would like to share some of that correspondence with you.

Before we get to specific letters, I'd like to answer three questions asked by many writers. They involve illegal immigrants, Social Security bookkeeping -- and my picture.

-- Immigrants first. Social Security has big problems, which was the point of my article, and readers wanted to know how much of that is attributable to illegal residents' getting benefits.

The answer is, little or nothing. Here's why. If you're an illegal resident and get a legitimate Social Security number, and work long enough to qualify for benefits, you can collect if you move outside the United States. (However, you can't collect if you stay here, under Social Security rules.) But paying those benefits -- which illegal immigrants have earned by paying Social Security taxes, along with their employers -- is the same as paying a legal resident who has similar payment history. Social Security is an earned benefit -- it's not like Medicaid or welfare -- and those who have paid into the system, whether or not they're here legally, have earned it.

If you're an illegal immigrant with a phony Social Security number, you're helping Social Security, because you and your employer pay into the system but you don't get any benefits from it. The money is credited to a "no-match" account at the Social Security Administration.

And please, don't deluge me with mail about illegal workers. I'm not taking a position on the broader issue of immigration, I'm simply answering a legitimate question about its impact on Social Security, which seems to be negligible.

-- Now for bookkeeping. Many people suggested that the federal income taxes that higher-income recipients pay on their Social Security benefits should be credited to the Social Security trust fund. In fact, they already are.

-- And, finally, the picture that ran with the article shows my real Social Security card, but not my real Social Security number. It's a null number that Social Security gave me to use. It's not my real signature, either. Fortune's photo wizards deleted the signature I scrawled when I was 16 and substituted "Allan H. Sloan" written by one of my associates, whose handwriting is better than mine was or ever will be.

Now, to a few readers' letters, edited for brevity and clarity. I have not verified my correspondents' names or identities, which is why I'm using only initials of the names they signed with.