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| "I pray President Bush will NOT give in to the Dems and he will use a veto pen on this abomination! First of all, President Bush's administration wrote this agreement. There's nothing for him to veto. It is essentially a foreign policy agreement (a tax treaty), subject to approval by congress. It's not a bill written by congress, subject to a veto pen. Secondly, Democrats aren't backing this agreement and Republican fighting against it. This is a non-partisan agreement, unless there is a Tom Tancredo party out there somewhere. Then it would be a partisan fight. The hype surrounding this bill is just that, hype. An American working in England pays payroll taxes to the UK system and not SSA, yet can still retire in his home country of the USA and receive SS benefits as though he worked here all the time. The reverse is also true. Hence, since there are more Americans working abroad then foreigners working here, we actually benefit from these programs. Illegal immigrantion are a problem unto itself. We need to fix that problem directly, not screw around with other programs that are tangentially involved. Something unfair can be found in everything and hyped to the rafters for knee jerk reactions. That's what is happening here and it's easy because the minute one attaches the compound noun "illegal-immigrant" to the debate all reason flies out the window. A sidebar to this very article says: "The Social Security Administration estimates that it nets more than $600 million a year in payroll taxes under the system, and in 2004 it paid $206 million to about 102,000 foreign beneficiaries." So the author can honestly state they are balanced in their reporting. But who the heck reads sidebars? Facts can be found at: Here is a straight forward non hyped article on the subject. http://www.visalaw.com/03jul2/2jul203.html
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