9/11 GROUP VOWS TO PUT CONGRESS' 'FEET TO FIRE'(Restrick ILLEGAL ALIENS now)

New York Post ^ | 01/04/2005 | MATTHEW SWEENEY

[nanak]

January 4, 2005 -- Relatives of 9/11 victims vowed yesterday to press Congress to tighten the borders and crack down on illegal immigration. "We're going to hold their feet to the fire," Joan Molinaro, a member of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, said during a press conference at Ground Zero.

Members of the group, which represents families of 300 people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said they wanted to remind Congress, which convenes today, that it must revisit border security and tighter identification requirements for visas and driver's licenses.

The group joined Rep. James Sensenbrenner (Wis.), House Judiciary Committee chairman, and some other prominent Republicans last year in a failed attempt to include measures against illegal immigration in the intelligence bill that President Bush signed last month.

Sensenbrenner is expected to re-introduce the legislation today.

Families for a Secure America has charged that the failure to keep out unauthorized aliens led directly to the 9/11 attacks.

The group calls the problem of illegal entry into the country "massive" and warns that it has grown over the past 30 years.

[Marine Inspector]

Your welcome and I agree with your statement.

[Ben Ficklin]

Well, if we use your logic that Bush laid the groudwork by bringing up the subject, It would be more approprite to blame Tancredo since he introduced HR 946 almost a year before Bush broached the subject.

Considering that AgJobs was introduced in 03 and negotiations on that bill began 3 years prior to that, you would say that that even precedes Bush's presidency. In fact, if Gore had defeated Bush in 2000, AgJobs would still be the bill that everyone supports.

Let's look at it another way.

Although there was some immigration legislation in the 90s, it was mostly minor changes and adjustments. You have to go back to 1990 to find any significant changes in numbers. And back to 1986 to find anything dealing with citizenship.

So you see, Congress was due to make some changes, irregardless of what Bush may or may not want; irregardless of what Gore may or may not have wanted.

[Marine Inspector]

Although there was some immigration legislation in the 90s, it was mostly minor changes and adjustments. You have to go back to 1990 to find any significant changes in numbers.

You seem to have missed the biggest change in our immigration policy, since 1986.

You might want to take a look at what happened in 1996. IRAIRA was in no way "mostly minor changes and adjustments."

Also, no you cannot blame Tancredo or anyone else for Bush’s ‘plan’. The entire blame for anything that comes out of Congress, based on the Bush ‘plan’ is all Bush’s.

[Ben Ficklin]

How can the bills that preceded the Bush plan be based on the Bush plan? Was Karnak involved?

[Marine Inspector]

How can the bills that preceded the Bush plan be based on the Bush plan?

You tell me, I never said they were?

[FBD]

>"But, once again, had you bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that the particular passage was being quoted from an article published by the Heritage Foundation."<

-Well hell. If you want me to read something from the Heritage Foundation, why not just go straight to the "source", instead of linking to some left-wing/socialist site? ;^)

This article below, addresses what you are talking about:
"What Social Security reform would mean for blacks"

http://www.heritage.org/press/dailybriefing/policyweblog.cfm?blogid=3E884FEB-A0C9-D18A-0FA74FA3483CDFA7

From that article:

National Review's Rich Lowry asks what Social Security reform would mean to blacks in America. As the system currently is structured, he notes, many blacks suffer a negative rate of return on their payroll taxes. "

[Ben Ficklin]

Of course you are not required to read any links that I might provide to you, but if you plan to impeach the source, it is advisable to read and comprehend, otherwise you might end up looking foolish.

For example, have no intention of reading your link on blacks and SS reform mainly because it an attempt to change the subject, I am aquainted with the demographic data, and I don't plan to try to dispute it. Blacks die younger, everything flows from that fact.

Another good reason to read the article before you inpeach it because of its source is that that source could well be accurate. As a member of the UN council on Aging, the US is entitled to be include her position. The man that Bush appointed rep to that Council was also appointed to Bush's SS reform commission and had previously served as aid/advisor to the congressional committee and happens to be a card-carrying libertarian.

Addtionally, the data will likely be accurate. The demographic data collected by the UN Aging council will be the same data collected by Heritage, which will be the same data collected by the US Census Bureau. There was nothing inaccurate in the article I linked you to. However, it is important for me to emphazise that even tho the data, facts, and stats are accurate, it doesn't follow that one would rely on or agree with the conclusions or the positions based on that data, facts and stats. As you pointed out in an earlier reply the Council took a position critical of the Prez's plan to privatize SS based on the same data,facts, and stats that you or I would use to support the Prez.

Let me apply this concept to the illegals.

I would never, but never rely on anything found at the immigration sites such as FAIR, American Patrol, VDare, etc or from most of the columnists such as Malkin for the simple reason that they are trying to "punch your button" since punching buttons is the method that they use to create demand for what they are offering. On the other hand, Americas Policy publishes reliable data, facts and stats but their conclusions and positions are generally, but not always, hogwash. On the other hand, I find that the data ,stats, and facts published at the Heritage Foundation to be accurate and I tend to agree with their conclusions.

[FBD]

>"[I] have no intention of reading your link on blacks and SS reform mainly because it an attempt to change the subject,..."<
Sure, I didn't think you would read it. Oh well.
I read the article at your socialist site, ok?

The post you originally sent to me was in response to mine about guest workers being eligible for Social In-Security after 18 months of paying into it. You then posted a link with some socialist site praising minorities for having enough kids to keep the Ponzi pyramid SS scheme going for another 30 years. Sorry, not buying it.

How much do you think a "guest worker" will be paying into S.S.; V.S. how much they will collect?

"I would never, but never rely on anything found at the immigration sites such as FAIR, American Patrol, VDare, etc or from most of the columnists such as Malkin for the simple reason that they are trying to "punch your button" since punching buttons is the method that they use to create demand for what they are offering. "

Don't obfuscate...and why don't you just admit you're a liberal socialist?

[Ben Ficklin]

I'll tell it to you one more time: the Heritage Foundation is not a socialist group.

I'll tell it to you one more time: The demographic data collected by those three groups, and many others, are similar enough to be used interchangebly. If you think that that data is inaccurate, then it is incumbent on you to present the data that you consider to be more accurate. Otherwise, it is just your uninformed opinion.

No, you didn't read the article, otherwise you wouldn't have accused the Heritage Foundation of being a socialist group.

"How much do you think the'guest worker' will be paying into SS?"

Once again you have proven that you are poorly informed so let me correct you so that we are both reading off the same page. Totalization applies only to Mexico and consequently only Mexican workers.

First, we have totalization arrangement with numerous other nations.
Second, totalization will protect not just the mexican worker in the US but also the US citizen in Mexico. Even tho you have no knowledge of it, that is a large and growing number and those individuals tend to be big earners due either to their wages or their portfolio.
Third, the number of illegal mexicans who have paid in and will never get a dime is huge.
Forth, the fact that you are willing to cheat a man out of his money, even if he is a mexican, says a great deal about you.

Finally let me say that if your best and final argument is to call me names, you better tuck and run.

[FBD]

"No, you didn't read the article, otherwise you wouldn't have accused the Heritage Foundation of being a socialist group."

-You gave me alink to at a socialist site, and you even admitted as much. Why didn't you just give me the info from the Heritage Foundation?

Fine here's the article below.
Show me WHERE the topic had ANYTHING to do with guest workers or illegal aliens paying into, or collecting social security. I noticed it also talks about Asians having higher birth rates as well. But you didn't bother to add that to your biased title, either.

>"Third, the number of illegal mexicans who have paid in and will never get a dime is huge.

Really? *HUGE*? Show me the guestimated stats on how huge it is, than I'll show you some stats on the *huge* cost of health care, welfare, and public education spent on educating the children of illegal aliens.
Let's see which number is more *huge.*

"Forth, the fact that you are willing to cheat a man out of his money, even if he is a mexican, says a great deal about you."

That you think illegals (who broke our immigration laws by sneaking into the U.S.) are entitled to something legal citizens are getting?
Says a " great deal ABOUT YOU."

I have an idea: How about I invite some illegals to come over and pitch a tent on your property, while you are out of town. I'll tell them to mow your lawn for you, in exchange for camping on your property. Because they mowed your lawn, you should pay them a wage.
I'd like to see how well that went over with you.

---

I repeat: Show where this article addresses illegal aliens; either collecting or paying into US citizens Social In-Security:

---

New York -- Buried among the avalanche of Enron-related revelations this past month was a factoid that's ultimately of far more relevance to the U.S. economy's long-term prospects: the U.S. birth rate rose to its highest level in 30 years.

As of 2001, American women were having an average of 2.1 children in their lifetime, the National Center for Health Statistics said last week. That's the first time since 1971 that the birth rate has reached a level high enough to offset deaths.

And as any good economist knows, population growth equals economic growth. Together with productivity, it is one of the two parts of the growth equation.

More important is the question of whether the rate of population growth is strong enough to overcome the feared "aging effect." It's widely believed that the departure of retiring Baby Boomers from the labor force in coming decades, coupled with strides in longevity, will create imbalances that, absent drastic changes to benefits and contributions, will bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. The demographic shifts will create severe labor shortages, the pundits say, leaving a young working minority to support an old retired majority.

Assuming no change to inflows and outflows or to the retirement age, the Social Security Administration projects that the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program will begin paying out more benefits than it receives in contributions in 2016 and will run out of funds completely in 2038. Among the many assumptions behind that projection is a birth rate of 1.95. All things being equal, the now higher rate should push that date out a bit.

Still, the new data aren't giving demographers and economists much heart. At best, they put Social Security's day of reckoning back only a couple of years - it would take a much bigger and sustained rise in the birth rate to reverse the aging trend.

Moreover, as many economists point out, other assumptions behind the SSA's projections could be incorrect, and in the other direction.

"I think the real demographic news is that we live longer than the Social Security Administration imagines," said Laurence Kotlikoff, chairman of the economics department at Boston University. "Most think the Social Security Administration is underestimating longevity."

In a paper published in June last year, Kotlikoff estimated that it would take a tax hike of a whopping 68% to get the finances of Social Security and Medicare back into balance. The paper also had this to say:

"Close your eyes and imagine it's 2030. What do you see? A country that's older than present-day Florida, a country where the number of walkers equals the number of strollers, a country with only 15% more workers to pay benefits to 100% more retirees, and a country with high and rising poverty rates among the elderly.

"You see a government in desperate trouble - raising taxes to unprecedented levels, making drastic benefit cuts, cutting domestic government spending to the bone, borrowing far beyond its capacity to repay, and printing lots of money to `meet' its bills. You also see major tax evasion, high and rising rates of inflation, a growing informal sector, a rapidly depreciating currency, large capital outflows, and more people leaving the country than entering the country. In short, you see an America in 2030 that looks a lot like Russia circa today."

Generational/Ethnic Divide

Notwithstanding Kotlikoff's alarming predictions, the latest fertility data do add a fresh political perspective to the heated Social Security debate. For one, they show the number of live births for Hispanic and Asian women rising, with African American numbers falling and white child births holding stable, suggesting that the forthcoming generational divide may also be an ethnic divide. William Beach, Director of the Hertiage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, says there's a high probability that entitlement programs in 20 years will be financed by Hispanics and will serve whites.

But there's also a more positive spin. The fertility rate is far higher in the U.S. than it is in other industrialized countries and has been for many years. "That has very important implications for long term aging and Social Security in that other industrialized countries are in far more severe situations," says Ronald Lee, head of the Center for Demography at the University of California at Berkeley.

In a relative sense, that should make U.S. assets and the dollar more attractive than those of the United States' biggest trading partners in the years ahead, even if the best growth plays will be in the populous developing world.

According to United Nations data, Japan has a fertility rate of just 1.3 - assuming stable life expectancies, a number as low as that virtually guarantees population shrinkage, especially given the low rate of immigration intake in Japan. To make matters worse, the collapse in Japan's stock market over the past decade has destroyed massive amounts of wealth needed to sustain retirees in the future.

And it's not just Japan. Germany also has a fertility rate of 1.3 and is hobbled with a broad-based, inflexible pay-as-you-go pension plan that encourages early retirement and which seems destined to put that country's already deteriorating fiscal balances deeper into the red. The presence of a large Catholic population doesn't help, either. Italy and Spain's birth rates are 1.2 and 1.1, respectively.

Against these numbers, the U.S. looks like a growth haven.

[Ben Ficklin]

"Show me the guestimate stats on how huge it is"

Hang around on FR and you will see those numbers frequently. The highest number that I have seen published at FR is 20 million illegals in this country today. The official govt number is 10 million but it is universally accepted that that is a low number. Lets split the difference and say 15 million.

Given that fake papers are easy to obtain lets say that 80% have papers, even tho I think that 80% is low. That would be 12 million paying into SS.

That is today. Go back thru time, 10-20-30-40 years ago and add them all up.

Look, discussing this with you is difficult because you are not very knowledgable. I have to spend to much time getting you up to speed, like on student visas, totalization, the illegal population, etc. Plus you go off on wild tangents and try to change the subject. Not to say that the subject of blacks and SS reform is not a worthy subject, its just not germaine.

[FBD]

>"Given that fake papers are easy to obtain lets say that 80% have papers, even tho I think that 80% is low. That would be 12 million paying into SS."<

Fine. So you finally admit illegals are committing FRAUD by using FAKE SS ID, SS numbers, and you don't give a royal F#*k. Fraud is a *felony*, Sunshine.

You are the waste of time, you send me links to socialist web sites with bogus titles, you lie about it, you think illegal aliens are entitled to social security, etc.
You won't read anything that contradicts your liberal/socialist point of view about the cost of illegals health care/welfare either.

Worse yet you don't give a damn about the rule of law.

see ya

[FBD]

This ben finklin guy is something else isn't he?

[Ben Ficklin]

"finklin"?

If that is you best and final argument, you are inadequate.

[Ben Ficklin]

Drunk?