While many Americans believe that illegal immigrants don't pay taxes, the Social Security Administration sees billions of dollars flow into its coffers every year that have been deducted from paychecks issued to undocumented workers using false names and phony Social Security numbers - money those workers will almost certainly never see again.

SSA officials keep a record of total wages that do not match up with real names and numbers in their system. The record is called the earnings suspense file.

In 2009, the last year for which figures are available, employers reported wages of $72.8 billion for 7.7 million workers who could not be matched to legal Social Security numbers.

In 2007, just before the recession, that total reached a record of $90.4 billion earned by 10.8 million workers.

Since those wages were reported by employers and not paid under the table, Social Security and Medicare deductions had to be made. A total of 12.4 percent of those wages went into the SSA system - 6.2 percent paid each by the worker and the employer. An additional 2.9 percent was paid into Medicare, half by the worker and half by the employer.

That means about $11.2 billion went into the Social Security Trust Fund in 2007, and $2.6 billion went into Medicare. While that money will be used to pay retirees and health care beneficiaries, most of it likely will never be claimed by the undocumented workers who contributed it.

Since the passage of 2010's payroll tax cut - which Congress on Friday extended through February - workers have paid 4.2 percent to Social Security instead of 6.2 percent.

'When you hear people voicing anti-immigrant sentiments, one of the first things they say is, 'They don't pay any taxes, and they just take money out of the system,' ' said Jeannie Economos of the Farmworker Association Florida, based in Apopka. 'But that just isn't true.'