U.S. Social Security for Mexicans?

Social Security, the so-called "third rail" of American politics, has just become more incendiary. The Bush administration is proposing a change that is even more controversial than offering younger workers the opportunity to invest a small percentage of their Social Security taxes.

Everybody knows that Social Security is facing a massive shortfall in a few years when the baby-boom generation starts to retire. Higher taxes, reduced benefits or allowing some measure of privatization are the alternatives that need to be worked out by bipartisan consensus.

The Bush administration has just thrown a monkey wrench into a harmonious solution. A deal is in the works to add to the bulging Social Security rolls many thousands of Mexicans who are working in the United States, both legally and illegally. This idea would be very costly to U.S. taxpayers. It's bad politics, it undermines the rule of law and it invites a new wave of illegals to come across our border in search of taxpayer benefits. Vicente Fox's success as Mexico's president is threatened by his country's terrible poverty. So he has a very ambitious plan to deal with it: export his poverty to the United States.

Fox encourages poor and desperate Mexicans to risk all kinds of hardships to cross the U.S. border illegally, often paying their life savings to a criminal "coyote," making a deal to transport illegal drugs or enduring life-threatening thirst in the Arizona desert. Fox even toyed with a plan to give them survival kits to ease their pain. If the illegal aliens manage to elude U.S. border guards and escape death on the highway in crowded vans or trucks driven by inexperienced drivers, many manage to land in various locations far away from Mexico, such as Colorado, Iowa or Georgia. They can then hope to get hired by a U.S. employer willing to close his eyes to how they got so far away from home.

Nevertheless, the illegals are told by Fox and other Mexican officials to "think Mexican" first and send as much as they can scrape out of their pitiful paychecks back to relatives in Mexico. According to a Pew Hispanic Center and Inter-American Development Bank report, Mexicans in the United States will send $13 billion this year to relatives in Mexico.

As soon as George W. Bush was elected president, Fox started pressuring him to legitimize the status of some 10 million illegal aliens who are in the United States, plus give amnesty to many illegals by reviving a loophole in an immigration law called 245(i). Those plans were sailing briskly until Sept. 11, the day that the American people woke up to the dangers of open borders, and Fox was forced to move to an incrementalist strategy.

Mexican consulates in the United States started issuing an identification card, called matricula consular, to Mexicans illegally living in our country. By definition, this card should prove that the holder is in the United States illegally, but it began to be accepted by police, banks and even driver's license offices in some states as though it were a valid ID. New York state and New York City, however, citing security reasons, just announced that they will not recognize the matricula consular as a valid identity card.

The deputy White House press secretary has just confirmed that the Social Security Administration has begun discussions with Mexico about an agreement to allow Mexicans to receive U.S. Social Security benefits. One plan is to allow Mexicans who were not employed in the United States long enough to collect U.S. Social Security benefits to count the time they worked in Mexico as part of the mandatory 10 years or 40 quarters.

The most expensive plan is to provide benefits to the estimated 5 million Mexicans who are working illegally in the United States after having supplied fake Social Security numbers to their employers.

"Our actuaries are working on the numbers," said Social Security spokesman Jim Courtney.

Acquiescing to Fox's demands would put hundreds of thousands of Mexicans onto the rolls of the U.S. Social Security system just as the first wave of baby boomers starts getting retirement checks. Already there is talk of an addition to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to handle 37,000 claims anticipated in the first year.

The Bush administration claims that these plans would promote "totalization" of U.S. and Mexican retirement systems and develop a positive relationship between the two countries. But offering Social Security benefits to people who knowingly violate U.S. immigration laws would create a powerful new incentive for more illegals to enter the United States. If foreigners work legally in the United States and pay Social Security taxes, they are entitled to receive the benefits they earned. But U.S. taxpayers should say "no" to Mexico's attempt to shift its social welfare burdens onto the U.S. taxpayers.

it's real easy to solve the illegal alien problem. Few of our citizens know about it. The solution that Reagan wanted, the solution that would work easily and inexpensively, the solution that our congress rejected back circa 1986 or so is as follows.

The government can tell easily who is legal and who is illegal from their databases. The social security database alone is a good source for this. The laws today function to force employers to inform the government about each paycheck they send out and what social security # the person has who gets that check. From this info alone the government's computers can ferret out every week the new paychecks that are going to people who do not have valid social security #'s. The illegal aliens of course don't have valid social security #'s, they buy fake social security cards and such.

We had a news story months ago how the government is identifying people with duplicate social security #'s and forcing the employers to fire these people. At that time we were asking, 'well, if the government can do that, then why don't they also identify the fraudulent #'s and force the employers to fire those people as well.' The fix is in, the government can easily send illegals home. They simply prefer not to.

Reagan wanted every employer to call an 800 # or use a modem or something like that to verify the credibility of documents that they are required to look at when they hire people. But congress rejected this idea, Reagan almost vetoed the legislation as a result.

When the government is defying the will of the population you'd think that the citizens would vote the rascals out. But the citizens do not. We re-elect voluntarilly about 98% of all incumbents, we don't care if they defy our will or not.

The republicans and the democrats are each disloyal to the americans, they work together on some issues, they compete on some issues. The decisions are made behind closed doors by people who are more important than our president even. The politicians are just doing what they have to do to get elected by going along with the corruption. We americans are enabling them by re-electing them.

Any politician who votes for this should be removed from office, regardless of party affiliation. Regardless if you throw out your favorite republican and put in a liberal dem in his place. This is the only way to beat them. Otherwise, they will exploit this rivalry between repubs & dems by working together cleverly so that we'll be frustrated. What's more important, the interests of the United States? or this petty rivalry between repubs and dems. We should just vote them all out who vote for this or for anything else we disapprove of. If we did that, then eventually we might win. If we don't, then we'll lose for sure.

At presidential level we have to vote for lesser of two evils. But for congressional races our motto should be 'throw the bum out' regardless of party.

Isn't much of the employment of illegal aliens done on a cash-only, off-the-books, no-employment-records basis?

let me answer that question. For many years people who pay attention to the tv have been systematically mis-led on the illegal aliens in our economy. I live in arizona where we've been inundated with illegal aliens for more than 20 years. I've worked a lot of years in the construction industry. So, I've viewed it first-hand and in my younger days competed directly with illegals for jobs.

It was a huge myth the media successfully sold people for a long time that illegals work for under the minimum wage or for very low wages. This may have happened in some cases. But it has never been the norm. The norm is that they just work regular jobs at regular wages. Back in 1979 they had illegal aliens here working at a nuclear power plant construction project at $14/hour. With inflation that'd be around $30/hour now. All wages for blue collar construction people have declined in real terms dramatically since 1980.

Illegal aliens have networks of people, it's an incredible network in fact. It includes people who go to the border to get people. It includes houses that hold people temporarilly as they travel across the country. I have a neighbor who told me his sister works as a coyote on the weekends for extra money. I've met her.

If you're plugged into this underground network, then you can buy all the documents you need to work in the job market. The US government requires every employer to check documents upon hire. The US government does not require that the employer even make a phone call or modem inquiry to see if the document is real or not. So, the illegal just get fake docs and then they are legal to hire. The employer must merely photo-copy the document to prove they checked. Fake docs are said to be very affordable. Fake docs I mean driver's license, social security card, green card. These things are ubiquitous.

So, I've worked a lot for one big construction subcontractor that has 7,000 employees in 25 cities. I was their programmer. So, I know they have people on staff with duplicate social security #'s. That means the people who issued the fake doc gave the same # to 2 people, that's what that means. The clerical people are required to check your driver's license before they give you your check. They told me about some times when people come in to get their check and they have to check their own driver's license before they know their name. Also, people will come in to get a job and they don't have docs. Then they ask diligently what docs they need, then they come back in 2 hours with obviously brand new docs.

So, if you're an illegal alien, the road to get jobs is paved for you by others before you and the employers will welcome you, the people who make the fake docs for you are easily available along the networks the illegals travel in. That's how it is. Illegal aliens are very ordinary people, very ubiquitous. Their kids make up very large portions of many schools. They go to hospitals and get medical care routinely.

If you defined people as being 'mexican' if they or their ancestors were in mexico in 1970, then a significant portion of mexico, perhaps 20% or more, has already migrated to the US and become a part of the US. We're not going to send people home who have even 2-3 years inside the US. So, the migration just continues.

The only solution is what reagan wanted. We give them amnesty, but at the same time we truly force the employers tohire only legal people from now on. Instead, congress just gave them amnesty and an enforcement mechanism that was purposely made dysfunctional. Reagan simply wanted the enforcement mechanism, the checking of documents by employers, to be something that really worked. Reagan wanted them to have to do like a store clerk validating a credit card. A store clerk can check in 30 seconds to see if your credit card is good or bad. Reagan wanted that type of a system with the documents that the employers are required to check. Congress wouldn't give him that. But congress did require the employers to check the documents. We knew back in 86 when the law was made that it was going to lead to a huge market for black market documents and that is exactly what has happened.

But illegal work regular jobs and have regular lives. It is a complete myth that they work at sub-standard jobs. You find them as store clerks, sometimes office jobs even.

Where I live there's dozens of mexican men on the street corner looking for jobs 7 days a week. Just 5 years ago if anyone did that they'd be arrested in this location because it was against the city law. They changed the law just for the mexicans though. In this same location, I checked in a database, there have been individuals imported through h1b visa program to work as carpenters, masons and many other manual labor jobs.

So, the american people are just kept in the dark. The media purposely doesn't want us informed on this issue and on many others.

The cash jobs exist, the guys at the street corner will all work for cash. But there are many non-mexicans standing on the corners now also to do that. They will work for decent wages, just cash. But the norm is they work regular jobs with a paycheck.

I believe that the illegals will be made legals and given the choice of retiring north or south of the border. That is what this means. The social security fund will credit them retro-actively.

It's like this ... .. the politicians had one priority above all other priorities in the 1960's. They all talked endlessly about ending poverty. So, they made policy changes that resulted in dramatic increases in poverty. Poverty levels still haven't gotten back as low as they were in 1963.

But in the 80's the sacred cow was social security. Everybody supported it 100% and would never vote for anything to harm it. But obviously, policies have been implemented that are destroying the integrity of the social security fund since then.

Simple math. You gotto consider the L-visas, the H-visas and the illegal aliens. Between them all I bet it's 20-25 million legal and illegal new workers who were brought in the last 16-17 years through policies that didn't have to be. The result has been lower wages & salaries for many americans which is a big negative for social security revenues and the only offsetting gains in revenues now completely offset themselves by a simple give-away of the revenue to these 20-25 million new legal or illegal workers. In other words, the executives that we hired to watch the social security fund who all swore up and down that they were 100% sure they'd never vote for anything to harm social security have in fact now severely damaged social security.

The bush team concluded about a year ago that we should plan on cutting social security payments to the elderly poor in real dollars in the year 2016. THat was before bush decided to pay social security benefits to these 10 million currently illegal, but soon to be legal workers.

The historians will tell us that the democrats created social security while the republicans stood by and did nothing. They republicans destroyed social security while the democrats stood by and did nothing. But the amazing thing is that the democrats lied about it on a grand scale when they created social security and then the republicans lied to us on a grand scale when they destroyed it. Ain't the 2 party system grand?

Thank you for proving me right yet again. "Dink" (aren't you glad I'm not some PC Oriental race-baiter type who would take offense at that name and report you for abuse?), "Pinocchio". Ah, you are quite the girly-man, aren't you?

You know, if you'd responded to my first post by saying something to the effect of, "No, wku, you're wrong. I'm not an appologist for illegal scumbag aliens, I just don't think our pourous borders are as big a problem as you and others on FReep do. I certainly don't think citizens' militias conducting patrols is a good idea", I would have researched your posts, and found that I was wrong for the most part, and would have eaten some crow. I'd still have disagreed with you, but at least then we could have done battle with our wits, instead of put-downs.

But no, you had to be a snippy little bitch boy and call me a liar (which, by the way, you still haven't proven!), a dink, and Pinocchio. You know, that's a liberal tactic, resorting to name calling instead of having the cajones to stand and defend your positions with substance, common sense, logic, facts, etc. That's too bad, too, because you missed the opportunity to hear big, mean, old wku man admit he was wrong for the most part. Instead you've verified what I've long suspected about you...you're just another run of the mill, wimpy, and not too bright, liberal disruptor. Well, maybe you're just a deluded Libertarian. Either way, it's too bad I'm in Florida and you're in LA. I'd love to tell you all this man-to-...well, whatever you are.

Scouts out! Cavalry Ho!

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