Thanks. Much worse, but thanks.
One of the main problems with this agreement with Mexico is that our government is only estimating 47000 Mexican workers. The government doesn't seem to have a clue of the cost of such a program.
Reading the GAO document itself, reveals the following estimation about the potential costs:
SOCIAL SECURITY: Proposed Totalization Agreement with Mexico Presents Unique Challenges (That's an understatement)
Finally, the cost of a totalization agreement with Mexico is highly uncertain. SSA’s actuarial estimate states that the cost of a Mexican agreement would be $78 million in the first year and would grow to $650 million by 2050. The estimate assumes the initial number of newly eligible Mexican beneficiaries is equivalent to the 50,000 beneficiaries living in Mexico today and would grow sixfold over time. However, this proxy figure does not directly consider the estimated millions of current and former unauthorized workers and family members from Mexico and appears small in comparison with those estimates. Although the actuarial estimate indicates that the agreement would not generate a measurable impact on the trust funds, an increase of more than 25 percent in the estimate of initial, new beneficiaries would generate a measurable impact. For prior agreements, error rates associated with estimating the expected number of new beneficiaries have frequently exceeded 25 percent. Because of the significant number of unauthorized Mexican workers in the United States, the estimated cost of the proposed totalization agreement is even more uncertain than for the prior agreements.
...
To qualify for totalized U.S. social security benefits, a worker must have at least 6 but no more than 39 U.S. coverage credits. Benefit amounts are based on the portion of time a foreign citizen worked in the United States and, thus, are almost always lower than full social security benefits. The average monthly, totalized social security benefit at the end of 2001 was $162, compared with the average nontotalized monthly social security benefit of $825. In 2001, SSA paid about $173 million under totalization agreements to about 89,000 persons, including their dependents.
So, in reality SSA does not currently pay 50,000 non-citizens. It pays 89,000.
And, contrary to what Southack assserts, Social Security benefits are paid to illegal aliens for work performed in the US when unauthorized. Or, to be more precise, while an illegal alien.
Under U.S. law, immigrants may not work in the United States unless specifically authorized. Nevertheless, immigrants often do work without authorization and pay social security taxes. Under the Social Security Act, all earnings from covered employment in the United States count towards earning social security benefits, regardless of the lawful presence of the worker, his or her citizenship status, or country of residence. Immigrants become entitled to benefits from unauthorized work if they can prove that the earnings and related contributions belong to them. However, they cannot collect such benefits unless they are either legally present in the United States or living in a country where SSA is authorized to pay them their benefits. Mexico is such a country.
Seems pretty cut and dried to me.
The term, "unauthorized worker" is the same as illegal alien and US taxpayer dollars will be paid to literally millions of newly eligible Mexican illegal aliens under this Totalization Agreement with Mexico..
Cortesía de la Administración de Jorge Arbusto.
There was no totalization treaty with Mexico in 2001. Those 89,000 legal foreign workers in the U.S. were from countries *other* than Mexico.
The new Totalization treaty with Mexico, per Post #3 on this thread, will impact 47,000 legal Mexican's in the U.S. and 3,000 legal Americans working in Mexico, for an additional 50,000 people. That's where the 50,000 number originates.
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
Only if you believe the fairy tale that illegal aliens are dutifully reporting their wages and employers to the IRS and SSA, are getting paid above-board, and are having Social Security taxes deducted from their paychecks.
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
No, no, and no. Per your own posts above, which you've already seem to have forgotten, the new Totalization treaty only applies to 50,000 new people, in total, over all of the next 5 years.
That's an average of 10,000 people per year. If that was the limit and full scope/scale of our entire illegal immigration problem, no one would even care.
But 50,000 does not compare to our 8 million illegal aliens.
Further, you seem to have difficulty accepting that 3,000 of those 50,000 new workers are *Americans* legally working in Mexico.
Moreover, you are deliberately obfuscating the difference between eliminating a double-tax, which is all that the Totalization Treaty does, from that of enlarging Social Security.
Yes, this treaty enlarges Social Security, but by only 10,000 legal workers per year...not by "literally millions" of illegal workers...and that tiny "enlargement" of SS is little more than a bookkeeping change that is needed in order to eliminate Mexico's double-tax on American workers in Mexico and on Mexican workers in the U.S.
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires