Thread: Policies Can’t Reward Illegal Behavior

http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=168

Policies Can’t Reward Illegal Behavior

Posted By Bobby Eberle On December 8, 2005 at 7:33 am

As the debate moves forward on the issues of border security and illegal immigration, a proposal is being considered which would allow illegal aliens to collect social security benefits for the time in which they were using “borrowed, stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers� to work in the United States. Rather than financial benefits, the “reward� for illegal immigration should be jail time or deportation.

According to today’s story Bush Plan: Social Security for ‘Legalized’ Illegal Aliens, while there is ongoing resistance in Congress to implementing a “guest worker� program, “the White House might use the legislative opportunity to seek approval for an International Social Security Agreement with Mexico, something it has wanted for more than two years.�


Mark Krikorian, the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, told CNSNews.com that similar understandings known as “totalization agreements� between the U.S. and nations such as Great Britain, Canada, and France are beneficial and are designed “for two advanced countries that occasionally send corporate transferees from one country to the next for a two or three year stint to be able to reconcile their respective retirement systems.�

Krikorian said, “It’s not for a third world country that sends millions of peasants into a developed country to take advantage of; there’s a complete mismatch, an imbalance.�

The story goes on to quote Social Security Administration Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart as saying that a totalization agreement with Mexico would not necessarily allow illegal aliens who become “legal� under a guest worker plan to receive benefits from work done while in the country illegally. However, Krikorian disagrees:

“What they want is for illegal aliens who ‘adjust’ to some kind of legal status to be able to count their illegal work toward Social Security,� Krikorian said. “That’s not up for contention, that’s just a fact. The Social Security Administration negotiated the agreement, already, with Mexico.�

The argument being made is that because an illegal alien possessed a Social Security card, this worker, while in the country illegally, paid Social Security taxes just like a U.S. citizen and thus, upon becoming “legal,� the worker should be entitled to those benefits. I’m sorry, but our country shouldn’t work that way, and any policy that rewards illegal activity is a bad policy. Regardless of whether taxes were paid, no benefits should be expected for work done by someone who is breaking the law. This is the United States, and we should set a higher standard.

Social Security is supposed to exist to make up for a shortfall in income and life savings on the part of an American citizen or legal immigrant. The amount of money out of a paycheck that goes to Social Security is 6.2% What should concern voters that are aware is not the 6.2% of an illegal aliens income that goes to Social Security and is not returned. It is that instead a 100% of the income should have gone to a citizen or legal immigrant.