Social Security Fraud: If Illegals Steal It, They Earn It?

RUSH: You’ve got to hear this sound bite, Friday night on Hardball with Chris Matthews talking to Bloomberg News’ Margaret Carlson, and Matthews says, “Can the president win this bill?”
CARLSON: I happened to be listening to Rush Limbaugh that day, who had already gotten the talking points [sic], and he couldn’t go along with it for three hours. The president did it backwards. I think a lot of people who are sympathetic to the immigrants who are here and want to find a way to make them legal still want the border secured. Ah, but he did it backwards for his base and isn’t convincing to the people who are sympathetic to the immigrants who are here who feel they were seduced to this country and have to find a way to make it legal.
RUSH: Whoa! It’s America’s fault that they’re here! Illegal immigrants were “seduced.” They were seduced to come here. And then of course I, ladies and gentlemen, got the talking points but they’re so outrageous, not even I could stick to them. Margaret! Margaret? You know me! (sigh) This is unbelievable. I do not get White House talking points. I don’t know who even sends them out. (interruption) Yeah, we’re the ones. We make talking points, Margaret. We are the ones that are show prep for everybody else in the rest of the media to follow. We do the talking points here. (sigh) It’s just frustrating. You’ve gotta hear this from Senator McCain on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Question: “You were one of the leaders in a 50-49 vote who voted to allow illegal immigrants to collect Social Security benefits, even if they got their job illegally by forging documents — identity theft, in other words. You were one of only 11 Republicans who voted for it. Should we allow illegals to benefit from committing a felony?”
McCAIN: Well, they paid the taxes. Do you want a refund? At least shouldn’t you then if you don’t want them to get benefits, they paid the taxes that came out of their salaries, and, uh, so they contributed. Should they at least not, uhhh… Should they be deprived of the taxes that they paid?
WALLACE: I don’t think that’s —
RUSH: So the fact that they committed identity theft and fraud is something that doesn’t matter, and of course if you’re going to have selective application of the law on something like this, no matter what policy you come up with, it’s going to fail. Chris Wallace follows up with: “I don’t believe, I don’t have to tell you, that conservatives are saying they broke the law and that they’re going to benefit from that.”
MCCAIN: Look, the taxes were taken out of their paychecks. It was put into a fund that is a legitimate fund. Of course they were illegal because they were here illegally.
RUSH: Yeah, right! Yeah, well?

MCCAIN: But what we’d like to do over time and I think we could do this over time is establish some of these funds back in the country that they came from so there would be incentives for them to return home.
RUSH: So… (Laughing.) Collect their Social Security benefits and send the money back. We’ve already got such an agreement. We detailed it for you on Friday. It happened back in ’98, or 2002, I forget which it was. So now, not only are we going to collect their Social Security benefits, we’re going to send the benefits back to Mexico so that they can go back there! I thought McCain was one of these guys saying, “They’re great. They’re needed. They’re the backbone, the future of our society.” What’s he now talking about coming up with incentives to send them back to Mexico for? We’ve already got laws that will do that without bribing them with Social Security money, and then there’s this. Chris Wallace says, “Give me an example, since you bring it up, what have you done? What would you admit that you did for political expedience?”
McCAIN: I went down to South Carolina and said that flag that was flying over the State Capitol, which was a Confederate flag, was — that I shouldn’t be involved in it, it was a state issue. It was an act of cowardice.
WALLACE: Act of cowardice on your part?
McCAIN: Yes.
WALLACE: And you did it because you thought, “This will help me in the South Carolina primary in 2000”?
McCAIN: Yeah, sure. “This won’t alienate a certain voting bloc,” and I lost anyway.
RUSH: And he lost anyway so he admits to being politically expedient. Now, this is, primarily, an attempt to satisfy those on the left who just love people who admit their foibles, just love people who admit their mistakes, just love people who admit they did something wrong. Because we’re all guilty and we’re all sinners and we all do things wrong, and if we only acknowledge our shortcomings and our deficiencies, then we can fully be honest and understand that this is not such a great country after all, which is where this heads. Now, there’s an argument over how many illegal immigrants are here, and there’s a number of different estimates.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2003 estimates seven million illegals. The US Census Bureau from 2000 estimates 8.7 million illegals. The Pew Hispanic Center from March of this year estimates between 11 and a half and 12 million illegals, and the Border Patrol Union Local 2544 in Tucson says that there are between 12 and 15 million, and Bear Stearns Asset Management from 2005 says that there are 20 million illegals here. So the estimates range from seven to 20 million. Why do I bring this up? Well, because of this story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“One in seven Mexican workers migrates, and most of them send their money back home. The current migration of Mexican and Central Americans to the United States is one of the largest diasporas in modern history, experts say. Roughly 10% of Mexico’s population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15% of Mexico’s labor force is working in the United States. One in every seven Mexican workers migrates to the United States. Mass migration from Mexico began more than a century ago, deeply embedded in the history, culture, and economies of both nations. The current wave began with Mexico’s economic crisis in 1982, accelerated sharply in the nineties with the US economic boom, and today has reached record dimensions,” with hardly anybody understanding, in elected positions, the threat posed by this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me say it again in response to Senator McCain. I made the point last week. I sometimes forget, you know, I have it in my head that every one of you listens to every moment of this program, and that you remember everything you hear on this program, and I know for the vast majority of you that that is true. But there is a new tune-in factor each and every day. People sampling the program for the first time. Generally, it’s people who cannot believe the outrageous criticism of this program and tune in to see, ‘Is it really that bad?’ So let’s go back to Senator McCain. In fact, grab cut five. Let me put this in perspective for Senator McCain and the rest of you, because I got some e-mail from people: ‘Hey, hey, hey, Rush! You gotta remind them again what he’s really talking about.’
MCCAIN: Look, the taxes were taken out of their paychecks. It was put into a fund that is a legitimate fund. Of course they were illegal because they were here illegally. But what we’d like to do over time and I think we could do this over time is establish some of these funds back in the country that they came from so there would be incentives for them to return home.

RUSH: All right. Before this he had said, explained to Chris Wallace, why he was one of the senators that voted to go ahead and allow Social Security benefits to be paid to people who had used identity fraud to get their Social Security number. He said yeah, what are they going to do about it now? The fact is they wouldn’t have had those jobs in many cases if it weren’t for the fact that they had committed fraud. Those Social Security cards with fraudulent numbers entrench a person into our culture and society in many ways. They are used to secure insurance, bank accounts, driver’s licenses, and of course none of these people — it was a 50-49 vote.

Senator McCain, none of the others that support this will recognize or acknowledge any of the negative aspects of this, of the stolen Social Security numbers. Now, maybe if his identity had been stolen, maybe if somebody had swiped McCain’s Social Security number and sent him through the pits… (interruption) Good, good point. Support staff wants to know which McCain identity are we talking about being heisted? The Maverick McCain or the New Conservative McCain? Either one. I assume that for both identities he has one Social Security number. Imagine that his Social Security number is swiped and that his identity is stolen. I’ll guarantee you he would have an entirely different view of this.

If they didn’t pay into public school systems through property taxes, then why do they get the benefit of that for free? Same with health care. The public is not stupid on this. This is just so much knee-jerk nonsense out there, and it’s all oriented: ‘Well, they paid into the government, and they’ve paid those taxes, and we must give them those benefits.’ It strikes me that there’s an element here in Washington that actually does think that the more these people get in and start paying Social Security, the less of a burden the program’s going to be on Congress to have to fix down the road, because that’s one thing they don’t want to do. They don’t want to touch it, as we found out recently. But in order to hold that belief you’ve got to acknowledge, you have to ignore that the strain on the safety net is going to be far greater than whatever contributions are coming in from these people.

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