America’s Retirement System is Failing Immigrant Seniors
By Shannon Camacho and Alfredo Trejo
In Los Angeles, if you walk through any neighborhood, chances are you’ll run into someone working as a street vendor, small business owner, landscaper, carwash worker, or day laborer. Many workers within these industries are immigrants who have powered our local economies for generations. Yet, an increasing number of these workers are older immigrant adults who are still working well into (what should be) their retirement years – not because they want to, but because they need to in order to afford their most basic needs.
The rates of poverty among California residents, especially older adults, have risen. According to UCLA’s California Elder Index, approximately 37% of older adults in California ages 65 and older do not have enough income to meet their basic needs. At the same time, data from the USC Equity Research Institute shows that more than 60% of the immigrant population in Los Angeles County are ages 45 and older. This rate is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.
For more than 15 years, Inclusive Action has been serving immigrant workers, street vendors, and small business owners across Los Angeles County. During that time, we have often heard from our clients and neighbors about their struggles to save for their retirement. These struggles are driven by systemic factors such as generational poverty, limited work opportunities, wage theft – and lack of access to government social services, due to their immigration status.
Retirement security has been a growing issue for most people across the country, but there are unique struggles that older immigrant adults face. Undocumented immigrants in particular, are ineligible for federal retirement programs, such as Social Security and Supplemental Security Income – even though in 2023, undocumented immigrants contributed a total of $26.2 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund. This is money that they will never be able to access as retirement benefits.
In 2024, estimates showed that 810,000 undocumented immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. Many already struggle with economic instability, which reduces their ability to save for their retirement. Ongoing immigration enforcement policies from the federal administration, as well as reductions to social safety net programs, continue to create additional uncertainty for their futures. These daily realities make planning for retirement extraordinarily difficult or impossible. Now more than ever, we need to advocate for our immigrant communities, regardless of status, so they can be provided with the support and dignity they deserve to retire comfortably.
To better understand these challenges and identify solutions, Inclusive Action is creating a Retirement & Social Safety Net initiative to: 1) learn more about the costs and barriers to retirement for older immigrant adults in Los Angeles; 2) better understand the intergenerational impacts caused by the lack of retirement options; and 3) co-design policy solutions directly with impacted communities to improve access to savings and retirement for older immigrants. By centering the experiences of those most impacted, we hope to generate meaningful insights that can inform policies and programs grounded in the realities of our clients and community members. Our work will include a community-based participatory research project that will survey immigrant seniors to gain insight into their experiences and struggles in accessing retirement.
As the federal government continues to strip away vital health and social services from immigrants, we must urgently address the disparities that our communities face around retirement, and create innovative solutions that allow all immigrants to easily access retirement.
If you are an organization that serves or works closely with older immigrant adult populations, we would love to connect with you to discuss opportunities to collaborate for our research. Please contact us.