Quote:
Ooh, I want in on this, too. They pay taxes. Social Security would sink without them.
Comment:
Right!
Social Security Agreement with Mexico Released After 3-1/2 Year Freedom of Information Act Battle
Illegal Mexican Workers Could Receive Billions of Dollars from U.S. Social Security System
January 4, 2007 (Washington, DC) – After numerous refusals over three and a half years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has released the first known public copy of the U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement. The government made the disclosure in response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA Senior Citizens League, a 1.2 million member nonpartisan seniors advocacy group.
The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.
A loophole in current Social Security law could allow millions of today’s Mexican workers to eventually collect billions of dollars worth of Social Security benefits for earnings under fraudulent or “non-work authorized” Social Security numbers, putting huge new pressures on the Social Security Trust Fund.
If an illegal worker working in the United States today gets a “work authorized” Social Security number through guest worker immigration legislation, the Totalization Agreement, or perhaps just over time, that worker could eventually apply for Social Security benefits once he or she has met eligibility requirements.
In addition, that worker could be able to claim credits for work performed while in the U.S. illegally. The SSA maintains an “earnings suspense file,” which tracks wages that cannot be posted to individual workers’ records because there is no match for a name and Social Security number. Once an immigrant gains access to a work authorized Social Security number – whether a legal citizen or not – wages earned while in the U.S. unlawfully could be reinstated to the worker’s new Social Security account.
The Congressional Research Service reports the earnings suspense file currently stands at approximately $520 billion. According to the congressional testimony of SSA Inspector General Patrick P. O’Carroll in February 2006, “We believe the chief cause of wage items being posted to the earnings suspense file instead of an individual’s earning record is unauthorized work by non citizens.”
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Remittances to Mexico Exceed Investment as Source of Income
By Ginger Thompson
The New York Times -- MEXICO CITY
Nearly one Mexican in five regularly gets money from relatives employed in the United States, making Mexico the largest repository of such remittances in the world, according to a poll sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank.
The pollster, Sergio Bendixen, estimated that the payments help feed, house and educate at least a quarter of Mexico's 100 million people.
The poll was part of a report on Monday by the bank, which said money sent home by all Mexican immigrants would soar to $14.5 billion this year, exceeding tourism and direct foreign investment to become this country's second most important source of income. Oil remains No. 1.
Bendixen said the poll offered forceful evidence that remittances not only sustained this country's rural poor but had also become important to urban working-class households.
Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, estimated that annual remittances to Mexico and Central America could reach $25 billion by the end of the decade, a vast sum made of countless tiny payments by America's lowest paid workers.
" This is not necessarily something to celebrate," said Don Terry, manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund. "It means that the Mexican economy is not expanding, and so people have had to leave."
Indeed, in addition to showing a significant jump in remittances, the report opened a window onto the shifts in illegal immigration to the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In the wake of the attacks, the United States almost immediately dispatched more staff members and machinery to bolster law enforcement operations on its border with Mexico, and it was believed that the heightened security would discourage immigrants from illegal crossing.
With fewer immigrants heading north, experts on both sides of the border predicted, remittances to Latin America would sharply decline. And the shrinking American economy was expected to force immigrants out of work, leaving them less money to send home.
Those forecasts, according to the Inter-American Development Bank and immigration experts, have proved wrong.