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>>Misquoting me?

".........or if they did pay in, they don't have the documentation."<<

OK, I think I see what you mean. You assume that if they used someone else's SS#, they would not qualify.

The trouble is, I have seen sleazy senators put too many loopholes in amnesty legislation, and I believe Bush would is a kindred sprit. Once "totalization" goes into effect via treaty, Bush, congress, the courts, and perhaps Hillary or a RINO president can make the deal even sweeter for illegals.

My opinion is that the health of Social Security WRT illegals is very difficult to measure, even for the GAO, because the assumptions that some of them will be ineligible in the future may not hold.

The GAO report does not sound that optimistic to me:

The cost of a totalization agreement with Mexico is highly uncertain. In March 2003, the Office of the Chief Actuary estimated that the cost of the Mexican agreement would be $78 million in the first year and would grow $650 million (in constant 2002 dollars) in 2050. SSA’s actuarial cost estimate assumes the initial number of newly eligible Mexican beneficiaries was equivalent to the 50,000 beneficiaries living in Mexico today and would grow sixfold over time. However, this proxy figure is not directly related to the estimated millions of current and former unauthorized workers and their family members from Mexico and appears small in comparison to those estimates. Furthermore, even if the baseline estimate is used, a sensitivity analysis performed by OCACT shows that an increase of more than 25 percent—or 13,000 new beneficiaries—would produce a measurable impact on the long-range actuarial balance of the trust funds. Our review of cost estimates for prior totalization agreements shows that the actual number of beneficiaries has frequently been underestimated and far exceeded the original actuarial estimates.

Is the estimate of payments 25% too low? 100% too low?

IMO, Bush and congress have both proved themselves appallingly untrustworthy.