Authorized immigrants who meet the Social Safety Administration (SSA) necessities for work credit—or who earned the equal of Social Safety credit by means of their work historical past of their earlier nation—can obtain advantages within the U.S.
Social Safety advantages embrace funds to certified retirees or these with disabilities and survivor advantages for the partner and kids of a deceased employee. This text explains how immigrants to the USA can qualify for Social Safety advantages.
Key Takeaways
Step 1: Get a Social Safety Quantity
To qualify for Social Safety as a authorized immigrant, you need to have a Social Safety quantity (SSN). Many individuals apply for one throughout the immigration course of or are capable of go to a Social Safety workplace in particular person to finish this course of. This can require filling out Social Safety Type SS-5.
Authorized immigrants additionally want a Social Safety quantity to be employed by any law-abiding employer in the USA. The employer will then report your wage earnings to the federal authorities beneath your identify and your SSN. That approach, the Social Safety Administration can join work credit to people and ensure you obtain the work credit and advantages you may have earned.
Step 2: Begin Incomes Work Credit
After you have an SSN, the next step is to build up 40 Social Safety work credit. You earn one credit score for each quarter through which you earn at the least $1,510 for 2022 to a most of 4 credit per 12 months. This quantity jumps to $1,640 in 2023. This method applies to everybody born since 1929, and 40 credit are the equal of 10 years value of labor.
How Your Social Safety Advantages Are Calculated
Incomes sufficient work credit means you’re entitled to Social Safety advantages when you attain retirement age. The dimensions of your profit will rely in your common earnings over your 35 highest-earning years in addition to how previous you’re if you begin to acquire advantages.
The Social Safety Administration will regulate your earnings historical past for inflation and decide your common listed month-to-month earnings. Utilizing that determine, they’ll then calculate your profit quantity.
Observe that when you begin claiming retirement advantages as early as you’re eligible—age 62—you’ll obtain about 25% much less every month than if wait till your full or regular retirement age (between 66 and 67, relying in your 12 months of start). Should you delay claiming advantages previous your full retirement age, your month-to-month profit will enhance as a lot as 32% by age 70. After age 70, your profit maxes out and there’s no additional cause to delay amassing.
The Social Safety Administration estimates that the common month-to-month Social Safety profit for retirees can be $1,827 in 2023. Retirees acquired a mean of $1,681 per thirty days in 2022.
You’ll get an additional 8% per 12 months when you wait previous your full retirement age to gather advantages. After age 70, nevertheless, your advantages do not develop any additional.
How Social Safety Taxes Work
To be eligible for Social Safety advantages, you’ll pay a 6.2% Social Safety tax in your earnings as an worker as much as the annual most, which is $147,000 in 2022 and $160,200 in 2023. Your employer kicks in one other 6.2% to cowl the total quantity, which is 12.4%.
Should you’re self-employed—for instance, you are a contractor or freelance employee—the calculation is completely different. Within the eyes of the federal government, you’re each the worker and the employer, so you need to pay each halves. Which means your complete contribution to the Social Safety tax is 12.4%.
Qualifying With Earnings From One other Nation
Authorized immigrants who haven’t earned sufficient work credit within the U.S. may nonetheless qualify for advantages in the event that they’ve earned sufficient work credit from one of many greater than 25 nations with which the U.S. has what is called a “totalization settlement.”
These nations are:
AustraliaAustriaBelgiumBrazilCanadaChileCzech RepublicDenmarkFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIcelandIrelandItalyJapanLuxembourgNetherlandsNorwayPolandPortugalSlovak RepublicSloveniaSouth KoreaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUnited KingdomUruguay
The small print of those agreements fluctuate by nation and are too advanced to cowl right here, however you could find them on the Social Safety Administration’s Standing of Totalization Agreements web page.
Should you lack sufficient work credit to qualify for Social Safety within the U.S. however have credit from one of many nations listed above, you possibly can mix credit from each nations and obtain prorated Social Safety advantages. That may be useful when you immigrated to the U.S. later in life and are unlikely to place in 10 years of labor within the U.S. earlier than you’re able to retire.
Nonetheless, “the agreements enable SSA to mix the U.S. and overseas nation credit provided that the employee has obtained at the least six credit of U.S. protection,” notes Z. M. Ishmurzina, a CPA and accomplice with Artio Companions, a Chicago tax agency specializing in companies for U.S. ex-pats and overseas nationals.
Eligibility for Supplemental Safety Earnings
Supplemental Safety Earnings (SSI) offers a month-to-month profit to adults with restricted revenue and monetary assets who’re blind, disabled, and at the least 65 years previous, in addition to to certified disabled kids. To say SSI advantages, you have to be a authorized U.S. resident who has not been overseas for a month or longer. Should you or your youngster meet the standards, you could qualify for SSI along with the Social Safety advantages you earn by means of working and paying Social Safety taxes.
To be eligible for SSI as a non-U.S. citizen, you have to be a professional alien. Qualifying classes embrace being “Lawfully Admitted for Everlasting Residence (LAPR),” having been given conditional entry earlier than April 1, 1980, being a refugee admitted beneath sure circumstances, and different designations. The SSA web site has a full record of the seven classes of non-U.S. residents who’re thought of certified aliens.
In case you are in a type of classes, meet residency necessities, and do not need a disqualifying prison historical past, you could be eligible to obtain SSI.
Additionally, your partner’s or your dad or mum’s work can rely towards the required credit you have to get SSI (however not retirement advantages). You may additionally qualify beneath numerous different SSI-qualified-alien tips.
Eligibility for Incapacity Advantages
The Social Safety Incapacity Earnings (SSDI) program pays advantages to staff who grow to be disabled, together with authorized immigrants. Even if you’re not a U.S. citizen, you could qualify for these advantages based mostly in your work historical past, army service, or different standards. Paying into the Social Safety system by means of payroll taxes usually means you’ll qualify, assuming you additionally meet the SSA’s definition of incapacity.
Eligibility for Survivors Advantages
In case you have a deceased partner who certified for Social Safety advantages, you could be eligible for Social Safety survivor advantages. Sometimes, you have to be at the least 60 years previous, and your deceased partner will need to have collected 40 work credit. The principles are extra lenient if minor kids are additionally survivors, or when you or your kids are disabled. Surviving divorced spouses can also qualify.
The profit quantity will depend on your age and your partner’s work historical past. Your survivor advantages could also be decreased when you’re working or when you remarry. You don’t should qualify for Social Safety advantages by yourself to be eligible for survivor advantages. The fundamental guidelines that apply to U.S. residents for survivor advantages are usually the identical for authorized immigrants.
If You Go away the USA
Authorized immigrants to the U.S. ought to understand how leaving the nation impacts advantages (along with the one-month rule, talked about above, that applies to SSI). Your Social Safety file is everlasting, so even when you don’t work for a time frame, you progress overseas, or you weren’t required to pay Social Safety taxes sooner or later, the credit you earned beforehand will nonetheless be intact, Ishmurzina says.
Should you depart the U.S. after you begin receiving any kind of Social Safety advantages, your advantages is likely to be affected. Should you’re alternating between dwelling in the USA and abroad, you could or could not be capable to acquire SSDI advantages, relying in your immigration standing, how lengthy you permit the U.S. for, and the opposite nations through which you’re residing.
Getting Assist With Your Advantages
Authorized immigrants with restricted English expertise can get Social Safety advantages data on-line in a number of languages. In addition they can request an interpreter when calling the Social Safety Administration or visiting considered one of its places of work.
In case your declare for advantages is denied, the SSA will present a cause for it, Ishmurzina says. Should you disagree with the choice, you possibly can resubmit your declare and supply any extra data required by the SSA. To enchantment a retirement advantages determination, name the SSA at 800-772-1213 (TTY 800-325-0778) or contact your native Social Safety workplace.
If you end up in an advanced state of affairs, you could wish to search authorized assist from an lawyer with experience in Social Safety advantages for immigrants.
The Backside Line
You don’t should be a U.S. citizen to qualify for Social Safety advantages. Your advantages can be based mostly on how a lot you earned and whether or not you’ve paid into the system for sufficient years. If your own home nation has a totalization settlement with the U.S., you could possibly mix work credit from each nations with the intention to qualify.