On 25 May 2006, the U.S. Senate, by a 62-36 bipartisan vote, passed the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (CIRA) — a controversial bill
which proponents touted as providing comprehensive and humane immigration
reform, and which opponents criticized as unfairly rewarding illegal aliens
by allowing them to obtain legal status.
On 18 May 2006, while the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act was still
under consideration, Senator John Ensign of Nevada proposed an amendment to
the bill to "ensure that persons who receive an adjustment of status under
[the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act] are not able to receive Social
Security benefits as a result of unlawful activity." The crux of Senator
Ensign's argument was that immigrants who had entered and worked in the U.S.
illegally and paid into the Social Security system using
fraudulently-obtained Social Security numbers should not be allowed to
receive credit for those payments:
[Illegal immigrants] paid into the system simply because that was the price
to pay to get a job in the United States. The immigrant knew they were using
an illegal Social Security number but without regards of the impact of the
victim. I have reviewed case after case related to identity theft and Social
Security fraud. These cases are occurring all over the United States. In
every case, in every State, where someone's Social Security number was
stolen by an illegal immigrant to use to find work, the victim's credit
history is destroyed. Sometimes their work history is too. Earlier I talked
about Caleb, a gentleman in Nevada. The illegal immigrant who used Caleb's
Social Security number was not trying to harm that person but he did. Caleb
applied for unemployment but couldn't get it because the agency said he was
working when, in fact, he wasn't. He lives in Reno. They said he was working
in Las Vegas. It was an illegal immigrant using his Social Security number
in Las Vegas.
I never said this amendment is going to prevent identity theft. What I have
said is that it is not right for somebody to steal somebody else's identity
— granted for the noble purpose of getting a job — and reward the theft by
giving work credit that counts towards Social Security. We should consider
the victims who are forced to deal with the terrible consequences of the
crime.
The Senate vote on this amendment is what is reproduced in the e-mail quoted
in the example block above. Although the message's text accurately reflects
the roll call vote that took place, the accuracy of its characterization of
those senators who voted "Yea" as voting "to give illegal aliens Social
Security benefits" is not accurate for a number of reasons:
* The subject of the proposed amendment was not about giving (or
denying) Social Security benefits to illegal aliens; it was about whether a
select group of
formerly illegal workers (i.e., those who might obtain legal
immigration status if the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 were
enacted) should be able to receive credit for payments they made into the
Social Security system using phony Social Security numbers (i.e., numbers
that were invalid or had been assigned to others). Such persons would still
be eligible to collect Social Security benefits in the future even if this
amendment were defeated; they just wouldn't receive credit for payments they
had already made into the system.
* The senators named didn't vote against Senator Ensign's amendment;
they voted (by a 50-49 margin) in favor of a Motion to Table. (That is, they
passed a motion to remove the amendment from consideration before the Senate
voted on it.)
* It was the potential passage of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Act that created the situation Senator Ensign's amendment sought to prevent
in the first place (i.e., allowing formerly illegal workers to receive
credit for earlier Social Security payments), so the senators who ultimately
voted in favor of the immigration reform act might logically be considered
at least as responsible for the outcome as those who voted to table the
Ensign amendment.
In a nutshell, the amendment referenced above wasn't about "giving illegal
aliens Social Security benefits"; it was about whether formerly illegal
aliens (who had since become legal) should be credited for monies they
themselves had paid into the Social Security fund while they were in the
U.S. illegally. The senators listed above did not vote in favor of this
proposition; they voted to withdraw the amendment from consideration.
The URL for this
page<http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/socialsecurity.asp>
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