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Notes -
I see this a lot. And I suppose it could be conditionally true. But considering a French banlieue of poor unemployed unintegrated immigrants or their unintegrated unemployed children: are these people propping up pensions?
Or as American, considering illegal Mexicans working for day wages. If they are paid under the table, in what sense are they propping up social security?
I get that productive employed taxpaying H1Bs are a net tax benefit. But other examples of mass immigration are not clearly net tax benefit to me.
A lot of illegal immigrants pay payroll taxes in America; roofers and meatpackers and such are usually on the payroll through fraud. Daylaborers aren't, but most illegal immigrants have more stable employment scenarios, often through contractors who commit identity fraud for them. They wouldn't be net taxpayers if they were able to access benefits from the government but they aren't, and contractors are more concerned with avoiding the wrath of the IRS than ICE.
In any case, we as a society do need some people to do low-productivity hard work for low pay on an ad-hoc basis, and local roustabouts no longer have their once upon a time single redeeming virtue(being willing to do that), so daylaborers from Latin America enable some real economic activity which eventually gets taxed that otherwise wouldn't get done.
A lot of the American elite's attitude towards immigration is driven by the assumption of these people being largely Mexican construction workers who mostly intend to retire in their home country due to cost difference and are employed by contractors who genuinely fear the IRS; I know less about France and Britain, but in America this was true up until relatively recently.
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