That immigration is neeeded to offset America's aging population and pay into Social Security has long been one of the favorite platitudes of the Open Borders lobby. Like most things they say, it's nonsense.

A recent report for the Center for Immigration Study shows that present mass immigration only marginally effects America's age structure and has little or no impact on Social Security Administration revenue.

Among the report's findings:

In 2000 the average age of an immigrant was 39, which is actually about four years older than the average age of a native-born American.

Even focusing on only recent immigration reveals little impact on aging. Excluding all 22 million immigrants who arrived after 1980 from the 2000 Census increases the average age in the United States by only about four months.

Looking to the future, Census Bureau projections indicate that if net immigration averaged 100,000 to 200,000 annually, the working age share would be 58.7 percent in 2060, while with net immigration of roughly 900,000 to one million, it would be 59.5 percent.

Census projections are buttressed by Social Security Administration (SAA) estimates showing that, over the next 75 years, net annual legal immigration of 800,000 a year versus 350,000 would create a benefit equal to only 0.77 percent of the program’s projected expenditures.

It is not clear that even this tiny benefit exists, because SSA assumes legal immigrants will have earnings and resulting tax payments as high as natives from the moment they arrive, which is contrary to a large body of research.

Whatever else happens, continued mass immigration will have little short term impact on reversing age trends or boosting Social Security revenue.

If only the same could be said for local tax burden, overpopulation, environmental degradation, social and ethnic conflict, crime rates, disease, terrorism, or national identity.

Oh well, every policy has its drawbacks...