E-mails are being circulated asking people to sign a petition urging President Bush to veto a Senate vote that allegedly gives undocumented workers access to Social Security benefits. One Internet petition has 324 signatories; the1,000th signer is told to send it to comments@whitehouse.gov. It's a hoax, but there are other "e-Rumors" like it.
The Real Story
As the political war over immigration continues, no doubt we will see more of these hoax e-mails and petitions to get people riled up. Here's why you shouldn't believe this one.
Fiction: The Senate voted to give undocumented immigrants access to Social Security benefits.
Fact: The vote in question was an amendment to the 2006 comprehensive immigration-reform legislation that stalled. The amendment got through the Senate by a 50-49 vote but never went further since the bill died. Undocumented immigrants who were using fraudulent Social Security numbers would only have had access to Social Security benefits for their prior work in this country if they were granted amnesty.
Fiction: Undocumented immigrants don't contribute to Social Security.
Fact: Undocumented immigrants contribute more than $6 billion in Social Security taxes each year using fraudulent Social Security numbers, according to the National Immigration Law Center. That money gets channeled into the Earnings Suspense File (ESF), a repository for all the Social Security taxes paid by people using false identities or wrong Social Security numbers, reports Consumer Affairs. Unlike people who legally pay into Social Security, however, undocumented immigrants don't get any money back.
As Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said at a hearing for the amendment: "Social Security is a system based on expectancy. For the illegal immigrants who paid into the system using a stolen Social Security card, they never did so thinking they would earn a retirement benefit. They did so, and I don't blame them, simply to get a job."
Read the September 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine to learn more about contributions from immigrants—undocumented and documented—to the U.S. economy.
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