U.S. Social Security for Mexicans?

TownHall.com ^ | Tuesday, January 14, 2003 | by Phyllis Schlafly

[dinodino]

This is so true. My infatuation with O'Reilly lasted about five minutes--that's how long it took me to recognize him as a populist tool.

[dinodino]

O'Reilly is hardly libertarian. I think he's more of a populist moderate conservative.

[dinodino]

You're right about the two sides of the face thing--he does that for SURE.

[newgeezer]

(you) The more moves he makes like this, the happier I am I voted for someone else.

(me) If not-that-many more of us had voted the way you did, we'd be discussing the latest moves of President Al Gore.

So it's better to get screwed over by your friends than by your enemies? What are you saying?

You proclaimed some happiness that you "voted for someone else." Well, there's no denying that a few more votes for Gore and/or conscience or protest votes for Browne or Buchanan in certain states would've put Al and Tipper in the White House. So, what I'm "saying" is simply that there's no doubt we're better off under President Bush than we would have been under President Gore.

I'm surprised that wasn't abundantly obvious at first glance.

[wku man]

Are you calling me a "proven liar", or someone else? Please explain. I'd sure like to know what I've lied about lately.

Scouts out! Cavalry Ho!

[Protagoras]

So, you believe we're no better off with Dubya as President than we would have been with Al Gore?

It's a matter of degrees.

It's not possible to know about a Gore presidency, we can only speculate. I would speculate that we are not as bad off as we would be if he had won.

Having said that, the lesser of two evils is still evil. I mean that politically (before you get your back up) not personally.

My impression of him personally (so far) is that he is a decent person, unlike his predecessor, and wants to do what he conciders the right thing. So did Roosevelt.

I don't want to die (metaphorically), from enemy fire, or friendly fire.

[newgeezer]

Yes, I agree with all of that.

But, it has little to do my original point, which was to question one's being "happier" that he "voted for someone [other than Bush]."

[Protagoras]

But, it has little to do my original point, which was to question one's being "happier" that he "voted for someone [other than Bush]."

People are happy or sad with their vote based on what happens later. That poster didn't vote for a person who didn't represent what he wanted, he is happy because it turns out he was right, Bush didn't represent what he wanted.

I guess you were trying to make him feel guilty by saying that Gore would be in office if others had voted their preference. I'm quite sure it didn't work. Some people vote for what they want, not what they are afraid of.

But fear is what is being sold all the time by both parties, and it partially explains why we keep getting people in office who don't represent us or adhere to the constitution.

[newgeezer]

Some people vote for what they want, not what they are afraid of. But fear is what is being sold all the time by both parties, and it partially explains why we keep getting people in office who don't represent us or adhere to the constitution.

So, it's either vote for the best candidate, or cower in "fear," eh?

I'm here to inform you fear isn't the only reason to abandon a third- (or fourth-, or fifth-) party candidate on Election Day; in my case, it's realism. Sure, I could go to the poll, show some "fortitude" and "vote my conscience" and feel all warm and fuzzy and civic and "good" about it. (I even did it once, when I was twenty.) Later, hopefully after the lesser of two evils squeaks out a win -- no thanks to me -- I could claim my own, little "victory" when he shows what I perceive to be disregard for the Constitution. (Nah, I couldn't do that.)

But, realistically, when I enter the voting booth, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can't even count on my like-minded FReeper friends to vote for my candidate (let alone any of the less-informed, casual voters in the mushy middle, who get their news from Peter Jennings). Once Election Day arrives, our best efforts could only split the vote and give the White House to the Dems. Realistically speaking, my candidate's grass roots efforts fell short this time. I supported my candidate through the caucuses and primaries. But now, his horse is dead. Rather than flog that dead horse -- and give comfort to the greater evil -- I'll vote for the lesser of two evils, and know I did what I could, instead of chasing a pie-in-the-sky dream (one might just as well fly to the Super Bowl to cheer for the Chiefs).

You guessed wrong; I wasn't trying to make anyone feel guilty or anything else. Just trying to interject some realism. Go ahead, call it "fear" if that makes you feel fearless. Me, I'm content in knowing I didn't and won't cast a vote with the assurance (and hope) that there wouldn't be too many others following my lead.

[Protagoras]

So, it's either vote for the best candidate, or cower in "fear," eh?

That's your characterization, not mine. I vote for the candidate that best supports what I believe. I'm not afraid that one or the other person who doesn't support what I believe will win. I don't do it to feel good, I do it because I have a right to express my wishes at the ballot box. So do you. If you want to express that you support someone whom you do not in reality support, go ahead.

Are you trying to make the case that political parties don't sell fear as one of their primary "weapons"?

This argument is as old as Free Republic. (and older)

I'll vote for the lesser of two evils, and know I did what I could, instead of chasing a pie-in-the-sky dream .

You said it yourself, you vote for evil. OK, it's your vote. As to realism, it's in your mind. Jesse got elected, no matter what you think of him. The Socialist Party never elected anyone but got it's entire platform put into law.

As for fear; give the White House to the Dems.

I rest my case on that.
I'm not particularly more afraid of Dems than Repubs. You might be. Old debate, nothing new to be added. Good luck.

[newgeezer]

(me) So, it's either vote for the best candidate, or cower in "fear," eh?

That's your characterization, not mine.

Well, then, I guess I misinterpreted your prior post (which I quoted):

Some people vote for what they want, not what they are afraid of.

From here, that looked like an either-or proposition.

Are you trying to make the case that political parties don't sell fear as one of their primary "weapons"?

Of course not. According to Democrats, Republicans want to kill our babies with second-hand smoke, pollute the water and the air, strip the forests bare, wipe out marine life with oil slicks, and kill the elderly by ruining Social Security. According to Republicans, Democrats want to... (Funny, I can't think of anything remotely comparable.)

You said it yourself, you vote for evil.

Sure. Don't you? Evil -- to recycle your words from a few posts back -- is a matter of degrees. When Jesus Christ appears on the ballot, we can both vote for non-evil. In the meantime, I guess we could do the write-in thing. It'd be no less effective than voting for the least of the 12 available evils.

Now, assuming instead you were talking about "evil" with respect to the candidates' adherence to the Constitution, much the same applies, unless you've found the perfect candidate. I haven't yet. So, I vote for the lesser, rather than the least, of the evils. Unless you've found that perfect candidate, you do, too. Therefore, don't be so quick to fault those of us who like to keep our heads out of the (colorectal) sand. (Nothing personal; no offense intended, as I'll explain later.)

As to realism, it's in your mind. Jesse [Jackson, I presume] got elected, no matter what you think of him. The Socialist Party never elected anyone but got it's entire platform put into law.

Interesting viewpoint you have there. I guess if I thought I was living in the equivalent of France or Sweden, I'd resort to those pie-in-the-sky dreams, and vote for whomever happens to be running against the two Saddams on Election Day. ;-)

But, seriously, if more people had voted for third-party candidates over the years -- how about Wallace in '68, Anderson in '80, Perot in (Oh, wait, he did help get Clinton elected; nevermind) -- we could have gotten here a lot faster. Too bad we wasted so much time making this the rotten place you seem to think it is. ;-) ;-)

As for fear; ["]give the White House to the Dems.["] I rest my case on that. I'm not particularly more afraid of Dems than Repubs.

A-HA!! Now we're getting somewhere. If one sees little or no difference between the possible winners, one might as well vote for their favorite candidate (Mickey Mouse or Pat Paulsen included). You see, when I said "the lesser of two evils," I meant it. You were the first one to use the term, when speaking of Bush vs. Gore. Therefore, I thought you meant it, too.

Obviously, I still see a (real or imaginary) significant difference between the two parties. Otherwise, I too would feel no qualms about voting for the best candidate on the ballot, be he Alan Keyes or Donald Duck. I trust that, if you saw significant differences between the Ds and Rs, you would stop wasting your vote. If you were to acknowledge those differences and continued to vote for hopeless losers, ... well, see "head in the sand" above. ;-) Idealism is cute but, absent realism, it accomplishes nothing good.

Aside from the fact that I knew I couldn't singlehandedly get Keyes elected -- we Iowans tried very hard in the '96 caucus, when he won my precinct and relatively large county -- I honestly wanted to give Dubya a chance to do the right thing once the primaries were over. Humor me if it takes a while yet before I lose all hope in him. One thing's for sure: I didn't want Al Gore in the White House. Give me any "R" over Al Gore. If that's fear, so be it.

At any rate, I suspect we agree on a lot more than we don't. FRegards to you and yours.

[Protagoras]

you would stop wasting your vote.

ROTFLMAO,,,the old tried and true.

The differences between Dems and Repubs are in details and scope, not fundamental philosophy of governance. That's my take. Further, I disagree with most of your post, but like you said, I suspect that we agree on much, so screw it, let it lie.

BTW, Jesse was Jesse Ventura, he got elected in a "pie in the sky" election.

[jpsb]

Don’t post much here any more too much noise, but what the heck.

What we see here is as old as Western Civilization. It is the age old battle between the ruling elite and the wealthy middle class. The greatest threat to the ruling elite is a middle class that has the means (brains, money and numbers) to depose the ruling class. The ruling class can always control and use the poor as a weapon. Think of the “mob” in Rome and Greece or the peasants in Europe.

A very strange thing happened in 1776, a nation based on middle class values with a written constitution was born. Ever since the 1900 when the success of this nation became apparent to the rest of the world the ruling elites have been plotting it down fall. The key to which is the destruction of the American middle class.

All you have to do is remember that both the Dems and GOP now represent the interests of the ruling elite, not the middle class, and the goal is to destroy the wealth and property of the middle class, then everything makes prefect sense.

[Tailgunner Joe]

bttt

[Uncle Bill]

“And one of my promises is there’s going to be Social Security reform, and you bet we need to take a trillion dollars out of that $2.4 trillion surplus. Now, remember, Social Security revenue exceeds expenses up until 2015. People are going to get paid. But if you’re a younger worker, if you’re younger, you better hope this country thinks differently, otherwise you’re going to be faced with huge payroll taxes or reduced benefits. And you bet we’re going to take a trillion dollars of your own money and let you invest it under safe guidelines to get a better rate of return on the money than the paltry 2 percent that the federal government gets for you today. That’s one of my promises.” - George W. Bush

---

The Great Global Social Security Giveaway - Rep. Ron Paul
"Worse still, thousands of foreigners who would qualify for U.S. Social Security benefits actually came to the United States and worked here illegally. Under "totalization," a foreigner who came to the United States illegally could work fewer than the required number of years, return to Mexico for the rest of his working years, and collect full U.S. Social Security benefits while living in Mexico."

Social Security Heading South of the Border - Townhall.com - Joel Mowbray
"The ill-conceived plan was hatched as part of an accord currently being negotiated with Mexico to help align its social-security system with America’s. ...government sources familiar with the negotiations say that there has been agreement on most significant issues—including the expansion of eligibility for illegal aliens."

Bush Planning Social Security Benefits For Mexicans
"President G.W. Bush has already expressed a strong desire to grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal Mexican aliens. Now, he is apparently working on a plan to grant Social Security benefits to tens of thousands of Mexicans who do not even live in the United States."

"Mexican President Vicente Fox has been pushing President Bush to sign a Social Security agreement with Mexico as something of a consolation prize to make up for Bush's failure to pursue promised immigration reforms. ...But excerpts from an internal Social Security Administration memo obtained this month say the agreement "is expected to move forward at an accelerated pace,"

Siphoning Off Social Security - The Washington Times
"If top officials at the State Department and Social Security Administration have their way, up to $345 billion — or more — could be siphoned from the Social Security "trust fund" over the next couple of decades, mostly to pay benefits to Mexican citizens who worked illegally in the United States."

"illegal aliens from Mexico would also become eligible for Social Security benefits."

"someone can receive benefits based on work performed while in the country illegally."

"The Totalization Agreement with Mexico, however, would make illegal aliens from that country eligible for the same treatment under Social Security as U.S. citizens, without ever becoming legal residents or citizens."

"government sources familiar with the negotiations say that there has been agreement on most significant issues, including the expansion of eligibility for illegal aliens."

"An internal SSA memo also indicates that the pact will allow illegal aliens to qualify for Social Security benefits: "Mexican nationals working illegally in the U.S. can currently become entitled to benefits if they have made payments to the Trust Fund that meet the vesting requirements. The Totalization Agreement would include this population of Mexican workers within the overall population of workers covered by this agreement."

GAO: Social Security Reform May Mean Cuts - Adding personal investment accounts to the Social Security system would require benefit cuts, tax increases or raising the retirement age for AMERICAN CITIZENS - January 15, 2003

---

Show Bush The Door in 2004

[Coleus]

U.S. Social Security For Mexicans?

Jan. 15, 2003 by: Phyllis Schlafly

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, Vicente Fox
started pressuring him to legitimize the status of the some ten million illegal aliens who are in the United States, plus give amnesty to many illegals by reviving a loophole in immigration law called 245(i).

Those plans were sailing briskly until 9/11, 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 I.D.

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 U.S. 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 in Vicente 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.
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Read this column online:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2003/jan03/03-01-15.shtml
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Fax: 618-462-8909

[Hila]

President Bush is simply being the politician that any other President would be: courting the Latino vote. I totally disagree with giving Social Security or any other American right for citizens to any number of ILLEGAL people of whatever country. May it not be so, less freebies and benefits for Mexicans and other illegal immigrants. If only the American employers would love America more than greed.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

"I've had several contractors tell me that the Guatemalans outwork the Mexicans by a mile."

We don't really need as many cheap serf laborers as we already have. For instance, farm production could be modernized, and we wouldn't have to hire as many people to pick crops.

But, if we really want serf laborers, perhaps we should put it out to bid. And, at least with the Guatemalans and other Central Americans (and people from other countries as well), we don't have quite as much of a contentious history with them as we do with Mexico.

If we've already fought one (or two) wars with Mexico, and many Mexicans consider the results of that war unfair, and are even taught that in school, it doesn't make much sense to invite millions of them into our country. (That does NOT include Mexicans who truly want to become Americans or those who are already here).

[Red Jones]

acongratulations about your vote in 2000. I'm sad to say that I did vote for king george. But in 2004 it will not happen again.

[Red Jones]

you're right, MissAmericanPie.