An undocumented worker named Rosa tells her story. Actually, it raises an interesting question:

Working in the shadows | Chicago Tribune

She paid $120 for a fake Social Security card and applied at the restaurant where she has worked six days a week ever since. Her boss, who relies on her to train new workers, has told her she could be an assistant manager if only she spoke better English. So she takes classes at a community center.

Her fear of being deported is yielding to a conviction that illegal workers need to speak up. With the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, an advocacy group for low-wage workers, she helped organize a petition drive last year backed by local churches. The petitions urged her restaurant’s franchise owner not to take action after the Social Security Administration sent “no match” letters.

The routine letters listed names of employees whose Social Security numbers didn’t match the agency’s databases.

“We told [the manager] that our Social Security numbers were not good, and we could not go to Social Security” to change them, she said, adding, “He already knew.”

So she and her co-workers continue using fake numbers, paying taxes for benefits they will never collect.

How much are we talking about here? How much money is sitting in Social Security ‘s coffers that is being paid in by undocumented workers using fake SSN cards… that will never be paid out in benefits? Does the money go to the account of a real person whose number happens to match the fake one? Or if that person is dead, do their survivors get mysterious death benefits? Or does it just sit there, making the bottom line look better? Or…?

I don’t know how accurate an answer I’m getting, but after Googling around, I’ve got a few ideas:

According to the National Immigration Forum, from a New York Times article, about 1.5% of total reported wages. It gets combined into a massive “suspense file,” currently holding billions. The money accounts for about 10% of the Social Security surplus.

But does it just sit there, earning interest?

Meanwhile, sympathetic as I am to their plight, I’d probably be just as angry, outraged, and xenophobic as this guy if someone with fake papers started using my SSN on their W-2s and I was suspended from work until the matter was resolved to the government’s satisfaction. I wouldn’t start typing ILLEGAL ALIEN in all caps, though. Too loaded, too jingoistic, too much like the yappers on the Right. I’ll stick to “undocumented workers” for now.