I simply do not understand why President Bush does not get the extreme animosity his base has for illegal immigration. This is the one thing he has done that annoys people the most. It almost seems deliberate.
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The illegal has to have the check stubs and prove that he is the one that was paid/deducted. The employer records have to confirm. The Social Security Administration has to confirm.
No doubt a much more realistic estimate than the low-ball numbers we hear repeated.
Ah yes, the "guest worker": When the Law of Supply and Demand just isn't good enough anymore.
I'm going to give you folks some straight talk about Social InSecurity. You may not like what I have to say, but demographically it's undeniable.
The present crisis with SS is that the baby boom generation, our nation's largest, is heading for retirement. The boom generation had relatively few children, slowing down our population growth and ensuring a gap where there were lots of boomer retirees and few "busters" to support them.
The only way to solve this problem is to have fresh blood, such as mexican, central and south american immigrants, enter the country and work. If whole fleets of 20something people start paying into the system now, it's possible to actually solve the problem. They are starting their careers here by paying for the retirement of the boomers.
Since our population growth has stabilized and even the busters are having kids, paying for their retirement should not be a massive problem.
Now, I am a vehement opponent of Social InSecurity because the program rips you off - it charges much more for retirement than you are ever going to get out of it. But the crisis of SS, where it will be unable to pay even the pathetic promised benefits, is due to the boomer retirement, and allowing more immigration has the potential to fix the problem.
So don't say that bringing these people into Social InSecurity will exacerbate the problem; quite the contrary; it may actually solve it.
Incidentally, even Americans are better off retiring in foreign countries where the cost of living is lower than in the US. This is especially true for people whose only retirement "savings" come from SS. Criticising Mexicans for wanting to do the same thing is a little silly when thousands of citizens leave the US in search of a better, cheaper life in countries like Mexico, Costa Rica and the Philippines.
D
"check stubs"?
All these day laborers are paid off the books to escape taxes - theirs and the employers.
Given the skills the illegals have developed for fake passports, social security cards, and drivers licenses, how long before they will be producing bogus pay stubs?
I will say this, it's telling President Fox informed the American people of the SSI totalization agreement a full week before the GWB administration did.
Disgusting and traitorous sell out
No, the little bomb inside the Guest Worker/Social Security Totalization Agreement is that Mexican illegal aliens are allowed, under the terms of the agreement signed by Bush's SSA, is that:
1) A Mexican illegal alien is allowed to apply for, and receive benefits after having worked for only 6 quarters (18 months) while US citizens only become eligible after 40 quarters (10 years)
2) A Mexican illegal alien is allowed to apply for, and receive benefits for his Mexican national wife and Mexican national children, even if his wife and children have never stepped foot in the USA.
How many wives and children can a Mexican illegal alien have?
When the GAO reviewed the SSA visit to Mexico, they had a lot to say about the SSA's methodology and it wasn't complimentary.
In short, anyone who trusts Bush or the Republicans on anything to do with illegal immigration is an idiot.
A lack of transparency in SSA’s processes, and the limited nature of its review of Mexico’s program, cause us to question the extent to which SSA will be positioned to respond to potential program risks should a totalization agreement with Mexico take place. SSA officials told us that the process used to develop the proposed totalization agreement with Mexico was the same as for prior agreements with other countries. The process—which is not specified by law or outlined in written policies and procedures—is informal, and the steps SSA takes when entering into agreements are neither transparent nor well-documented.
Current law does not prescribe how SSA should select potential agreement countries. According to SSA, interest in a Mexican agreement dates back more than 20 years. SSA officials noted that increased business interaction between the two countries due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a factor in the renewed negotiations. In addition, because there is a totalization agreement with Canada, our other NAFTA partner, SSA believed that equity concerns required consideration of an agreement with Mexico. In February 2002, SSA sought clearance from the Department of State to begin such negotiations.
The law also does not specify which elements of other countries’ social security systems must be evaluated during totalization agreement negotiations. SSA officials met with Mexican officials to exchange narrative information on their respective programs. Senior SSA officials also visited Mexico for 2 days in August 2002. During their visit, these officials told us that they toured social security facilities, observed how Mexico’s automated social security systems functioned, and identified the type of data maintained on Mexican workers. SSA took no technical staff on this visit to assess system controls or data integrity processes. In effect, SSA only briefly observed the operations of the Mexican social security program. Moreover, SSA did not document its efforts or perform any additional analyses then, or at a later time, to assess the integrity of Mexico’s social security data and the controls over that data. In particular, SSA officials provided no evidence that they examined key elements of Mexico’ s program, such as its controls over the posting of earnings and its processes for obtaining key birth and death information for Mexican citizens. Nor did SSA evaluate how access to Mexican data and records is controlled and monitored to prevent unauthorized use or whether internal and external audit functions exist to evaluate operations.
"Director Joann Barnhardt is so eager to give U.S. Social Security benefits to Mexicans that she signed the U.S.-Mexico Totalization Agreement in July 2004 and built an SSA building in Mexico: sort of a branch office, paid for by American taxpayers."
Isn't she thoughtful. Don't ya just love the folks who are so incredibly free with the taxpayers money? What's the solution? Garnish her wages until she pays us back...