Illegal immigration is a problem for this country.

There, I’ve said it. But it’s not quite the problem some make it out to be:

According to a New York Times article on April 5, 2005, “…the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year….Moreover, the money paid by illegal immigrants and their employers is factored into all the Social Security Administration’s projections.”

However, since illegal immigrant workers are here illegally, and ostensibly presented fake ID to the US employer, they will never collect Social Security benefits. “For illegal immigrants, Social Security numbers are simply a tool needed to work on this side of the border. Retirement does not enter the picture,” reports the New York Times.

The Social Security Administration remains solvent in large part due to deductions taken from the paychecks of illegal immigrant workers, yet Social Security will never pay benefits to those workers. The workers pay in, but they never receive back.

Wouldn’t the federal government detect fake Social Security numbers? According to that April 6, 2005 New York Times article, “Starting in the late 1980s, the social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with incorrect—-sometimes simply fictitious—-Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the ’earnings suspense file’ in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.

The file has been mushrooming ever since: $189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990s, two and a half times the amount of the 1980s.

But that’s not important right now. Look, a government run solely by business interests will never, ever, do anything to control immigration. Want proof of this, as well as proof of Republican hypocrisy? Here it is:  Read more