Thread: Rep. Lamar Smith: Illegal Aliens Drain Social Security

To Amnesty Supporters, Illegal Aliens Drain Social Security

By REP. LAMAR SMITH
Posted 05/12/2010 06:06 PM ET

A recent Rasmussen Reports survey revealed that voters remain concerned about Social Security and whether the system can deliver what the government has promised. According to the survey, 58% of U.S. voters lack confidence that the Social Security system will pay them their future benefits.

Advocates for amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants like to claim that amnesty will "save" Social Security. They also claim that dramatically increased immigration levels will safeguard our retirements and those of our children because more people will pay into the system.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

During the last Congress, I asked the Social Security Administration (SSA) to calculate the value in today's dollars of the payroll taxes paid by typical illegal immigrants and their employers as well as the value of their retirement benefits should they receive amnesty. Not only the typical illegal immigrant but any low-skilled immigrant will affect the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund.

Illegal immigrant workers, often with false identities, can't avoid paying into Social Security but are not eligible to receive retirement benefits for their illegal work. But if they receive amnesty, they can qualify for Social Security retirement benefits based on their earlier illegal work. And those benefits will amount to much more than what they paid into Social Security!

A single male illegal immigrant who works for very low wages and is now 25 years old will receive (at today's value) $15,596 more in Social Security retirement benefits. A similar female illegal immigrant will receive $20,936 more in retirement benefits.

A married illegal immigrant couple in which one spouse works can expect $52,460 more. And a married illegal immigrant couple where both spouses work will receive $39,037 more.

What would be the fiscal impact on the Trust Fund of the legalization of 5 million illegal immigrant couples who both work for very low wages? A staggering $500 billion! That would jeopardize the solvency of Social Security and threaten everyone's retirement.

Of course, Social Security is not the only way in which illegal immigrants negatively impact American taxpayers.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform has estimated that the total cost of K-12 education for illegal immigrant minors and the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants is nearly $29 billion a year.

And there are health care costs. If illegal immigrants are covered in the health care bill (there is not a strong verification mechanism to ensure they won't get benefits), it will increase the bill's costs by as much as $30 billion.

Then there are the human costs. Nearly 16 million Americans are out of work, and about 8 million jobs are held by illegal immigrants. By simply enforcing current immigration laws, we could create millions of job opportunities for American citizens and for legal immigrants who played by the rules and entered the U.S. the right way.

Instead, the Obama administration has all but abandoned work-site enforcement efforts. Administrative arrests are down 87%; criminal arrests of employees are down 83%; criminal arrests of employers are down 73%; the number of criminal indictments is down 86%; and the number of criminal convictions is down 83% since 2008.

If the federal government wants to regain the confidence of the American people, the Obama administration should put the interests of citizens and legal immigrants ahead of illegal immigrants.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... ?id=533804

• Smith, a Republican, represents Texas' 21st congressional district, including San Antonio, and is ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Remember that SS was a trust fund...what happens when you appropriate...(steal) money to use for other than the trust? You go to jail...unless you are a theaving GOP government...

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-5257--0-0.html

I am sending a copy of this to Gov. Charlie Crist. Can some of you do the same.

We need to send Rep Smith's article to everyone we know and help kill saving social security as a pro-amnesty sound bite. Folks who are dependent on Social Security will get it if they have the information to review. They will understand that adding illegal aliens to the beneficiary side of the equation will lead to less of the pie for them and their children.



Crist: Immigration Reform Can Help Social Security

Thursday, 13 May 2010 06:51 PM

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who's running for Senate as an independent, said Friday that providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants will help keep Social Security solvent

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/US-F ... /id/358987
_________________

I have always heard that Cubans are allowed to retire in the United States and collect social security without ever having worked in the United States.
Is that true and if so why?

Interesting letter. I have been researching this issue including reviewing congressional reports on the impact of illegal workers who pay into the fund. The Texas Representative is absolutely correct in his assessment that if large scale amnesty were to be granted to illegal aliens who have been working unauthorized and paying into social security due to mandatory employee/employer withholdings, they would be able to file a claim to the credits earned by their contribution from their earlier unauthorized work.

The way it works right now is the Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains a little known file called the earnings suspense file (ESF). When SSA processes each year all the W-2 submiited by employers they match names and social security numbers to the records in their database to properly record the wage credit to each person personal file.

When they cannot match a file because the name or SSN doesn't match, it goes through 20 other computer programs to attempt to locate the correct person file in an attempt to correctly credit the legal workers file.

After this process if they are still unable to locate in their database the correct file it then goes into the earnings suspense file. This is basically a black hole file. SSA in a 2006 congressional report by the GAO reported that over 250 million W-2 records since 1938 have been placed into this ESF. SSA states that they believe a majority of these W-2 records ending up there is a result of unauthorized employment where the W-2 info such as name or social security number used are false.

SSA in the GAO report stated the collected balance in this earnings suspense file as of 2006 was approximately a half trillion dollars. SSA records show that as of 2005 this ESF collects around 50 billion dollars a year and this number is growing annually.

This is money collected by the SSA from illegal worker earnings along with employer matching contributions and the only way an illegal worker could ever make a claim to any of the money in this file is if they become a legal worker and can prove that they paid into social security from previous illegal employment.

Having an amnesty program would certainly have an impact on the social security trust fund as many formerly illegal workers would now be able to make a claim for benefits unless Federal law was changed to restrict this from occuring or no amnesty program was passed.

The IRS also collects a large amount of money from illegal alien workers. Both Agencies share records with each other in an attempt to cross validate W-2's. By federal law SSA is required to submit annually to the Department of Homeland Security all W-2's that are in the ESF and suspected to be illegal workers and who their W-2 shows them to be employed with by the employers tax ID number.

Congressional reports and testimony by the DHS have admited that yes they receive this electronic file from SSA and they have not acted on this information as it considered a low priority to them in a post 9-11 era. They are focused on criminal alien violators as there top priority. They also stated that their computer systems were unable to open the file sent to them annually by the SSA as both their computer systems are not compatiable with each other so the data tapes have never been looked at.

The SSA has data on 8 million W-2's it process each year that do not match their database records thus indicating unauthorized unemployement. They know exactly who the employers are that these W-2's don't match. They easily see what industry codes these employers are classified in. They see how many suspected illegal employees they have based on the W-2's submitted by the employer. They have an accurate breakdown of the most serious employer violators who show to be knowingly and willfully employing illegal workers that use false info when they filled out their federal IRS for W-4.

When asked why DHS doesn't use this information for enforcement against employers DHS resonded that they are looking into it but budgetary constraints was the biggest factor.

The IRS stated that they are worried that if they pursue illegal workers that filed false W-4 forms that this would cause many employers to not report W-2 earnings on these illegal employees and thus pay them wages in cash and reduce what the IRS collects from these illegal workers.

So, in conclusion after reviewing these congressional reports by both the GAO and an internal SSA investigation by their own investigative agency that it is conclusive that the SSA, IRS, and DHS all know how much each year they are collecting from illegal worker earnings, where the illegal worker is employed, what industry is the most abusive of hiring illegal workers, and how many employees a particular employer has hired that is highly suspected by all three agencies to be an illegal worker/alien.

Money seems to be the common denominator between all three agencies as a primary factor of not aggressively pursuing enforecement action to employers employing illegal workers/aliens. I do give credit to SSA for having an extremely reliable tracking system to know who is employing who and who is working illegally and that they are sharing this information with the IRS and more importantly, giving this data to the DHS each year.

Now the trillion dollar question. On paper the SSA shows they have collected over a half a trillion dollars of illegal earnings that they have placed into this earnins suspense file. On paper they show they currently collect approximateky 50 billion dollars per year so this ESF grows substantially each year.

Where is the money?

Why is DHS ignoring extremely reliable data from the SSA?

Why is DHS not going after employers that SSA shows to have illegal workers some as high as 3,000 illegal workers working for them? They know exactly who they are because they have the employer's federal tax ID number.

Some estimates state that if the federal government was to go to large scale deportation operations over a 4 year period of time it would cost about 500 billion dollars. SSA has 500 billion in this ESF that supposively nobody is able to access the funds. Seems there is enough funds to cover an operation of this magnitude by moving it to DHS. Afterall, under current federal law the illegal worker who provided these funds along with the employer contribution cannot make any claims to the money while they are an illegal alien.

Originally Posted by SovereignMan

I am sending a copy of this to Gov. Charlie Crist. Can some of you do the same.

We need to send Rep Smith's article to everyone we know and help kill saving social security as a pro-amnesty sound bite. Folks who are dependent on Social Security will get it if they have the information to review. They will understand that adding illegal aliens to the beneficiary side of the equation will lead to less of the pie for them and their children.



Crist: Immigration Reform Can Help Social Security

Thursday, 13 May 2010 06:51 PM

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who's running for Senate as an independent, said Friday that providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants will help keep Social Security solvent

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/US-F ... /id/358987
_________________

Crist has no clue if that is what he believes. He should actually inform himself better by actually researching versus passing on something he heard. A majority of illegal aliens already pay into social security because they don't have a choice about it so them becoming legal workers doesn't change that or the amount SSA collects.

Originally Posted by elpasoborn

I have always heard that Cubans are allowed to retire in the United States and collect social security without ever having worked in the United States.
Is that true and if so why?

I haven't done any research on that but it is plausible for Cubans or other legal immigrants to claim SSI benefits without having paid in to the system.

SSI is a disability benefit program for those who have disabilities that prevent them from being able to work such a a physical or emotional disablity.

That would also qualify them for other Federal and State taxpayer funded welfare programs such as section 8 housing vouchers, food stamps, medical, ect.

In my opinion there are many people abusing this program and little oversight by social security once a person has been approved for SSI.

If you can get a Doctor to state you are Bi-polar you would qualify for SSI and numerous other taxpayer funded welfare programs.

As far as drawing a social security retirement which is much different from SSI I believe you would have to have contributed and earned the minimum work credits to draw any money.

Should another shamnesty take place, chain migration of elderly and other family members will happen and they will be eligible for SSI without having put in a dime into the system. It will bankrupt the system quickly.

Remember the 8-11 million NO MATCH letters the Social Security Admin used to send to employers? SS sent the letters annually. Most employers trashed them. A few tried to have the employee correct their SS info.
A lawsuit blocked the Social Security NO MATCH letters after the Bush Admin attached a letter notifying the employer that certain actions were REQUIRED. The injuction was due to expire Oct. 09

I have tried to find out what happened to the NO MATCH letters. They were used for many years before the injunction. The basis of the injunction was the REQUIREMENT for employers to release employees who could not correct Social Security records.

Maybe we need to put some pressure on Social Security to proceed with the letters in an effort to stop IDENTITY THEFT ???????