Status of Social Security totalization with Mexico?

Posted Sun, Jul 31, 2005 at 11:10 am

President Bush supports a Social Security "totalization agreement" with Mexico.

In January, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) introduced H. Res. 20, entitled "Expressing the disapproval of the House of Representatives of the Social Security totalization agreement between the United States and Mexico." It has 40 co-sponsors, but no action seems to have been taken since then.

This undated page implies that the totalization agreement is stalled and awaiting action from Bush. After he pushes it forward, Congress will have 60 days to block it. I don't know if that's accurate; for all I know we're currently within that 60 day window. In any case, you can send free FAXes about this at the last link.

For the reasons you should oppose this, the coverage starts here, and see who else supports this agreement here.

Comments

Tennessee Daughter (not verified)

Fri, 06/30/2006 - 09:44

The TREA Senior Citizens League, where TREA stands for The Retired Enlisted Association, numbers over 1.2 million legal American citizens who are retired from military and civilian careers (website). They are raising the alarm about the Totalization Agreement with Mexico on the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.

Currently awaiting signature by President Bush, the agreement would pay out billions in US social security benefits to millions of Mexican citizens who worked in this country ILLEGALLY. For three years TSCL has been asking the government for a copy of the agreement, AND HAS BEEN REFUSED! Yesterday, they brought suit in US District Court under the Freedom of Information Act.

Current estimates suggest that Social Security lacks the funding to pay its current obligations to the Americans who have earned their pensions with a lifetime of blood, sweat, and tears. To incur additional massive unfunded obligation will hasten the bankruptcy of the system.

What is worse, the US Social Security system is a vehicle for the redistribution of wealth. High wage earners get back disproportionately less than they pay in, and low wage earners get back more than they pay in. Since the illegal Mexican workers are typically at the very low end of the wage scale, the net effect is the transfer of wealth from hard-working United States citizens to illegal Mexican aliens. Moreover, the Mexicans will return to Mexico to retire, where the cost of living is cheap. There they would still receive benefits, under this plan. So the net effect is also to transfer the wealth created by the United States to the country of Mexico.

Yesterday, TSCL issued this statement:

June 29, 2006 (Washington, DC)

eh (not verified)

Mon, 08/01/2005 - 09:19

If SS reform/privatization would go thru, eventually (yeah, OK, that's a long time away) this would not be a problem. Only someone rabid would have any objection to people -- anyone, whether here legally or not -- having property rights to their own SS account plus earnings -- money they paid into it (perhaps with matching employer contributions). This is seen as a problem now because of the current dishonest, pay-as-you-go SS mess, where money SS recipients receives comes from taxpayers, instead of from payments and earnings previously paid into an existing individual account.

The sooner we begin moving toward SS privatization the better -- doing so would eliminate so many problems, including this one (and also the demographic one, i.e. not enuf workers for the number of benefit recipients/retirees).