"Still Pending: Totalization Agreement With Mexico Awaits"

With President Obama’s Fiscal Commission working on a plan that’s expected to include cuts to Social Security benefits and cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), TSCL continues to fight a totalization agreement that would award hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security benefits to an estimated 1.6 million illegal Mexican workers and their dependents. The pending totalization agreement with Mexico was signed in 2004 but has not yet been sent by the President to Congress for final review.

Last year, TSCL sought and received an opinion from a respected legal team saying that, under a totalization agreement, Mexican workers appeared to have greater rights to Social Security benefits than American citizens. The memo said that in the 1960 Supreme Court case Flemming v. Nestor, the court ruled that American workers have no contractual right to receive Social Security payments. “An American worker who has faithfully paid the employment tax has no legal recourse to any of those monies deposited in the Social Security trust fund,â€