Don't pigeonhole your Latino clients

"Although older Latino non-citizens have been paying into Medicare and Social Security, many of them will not have access to these benefits and will be left with precious few resources when they retire," Gassoumis said.

The paper notes the needs of this group, considered a "hidden population" within the Latino bomers, highlight the importance of immigration and naturalization policy to the next generation of U.S. elders, according to the researchers.

"Any discussion of entitlement reforms should consider the impending retirement of the bby boomers' most vulnerable members, a group that includes many non-citizen Latinos," co-author Fernando Torres-Gil, director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging and adjunct professor at the USC Davis School, told USC News. "Policies concerning the Latino boomer population will serve as a barometer of the willingness of U.S. politicians to address the emerging Latino population as a whole."