Social Security and non-citizens

There are many non citizens in the US who have a green card and a legal right to be here. They work, pay taxes just like you. Keep in mind it is expensive to become a citizen.

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I understand that and if there contributing to society in our country I’m all for it but I don’t want to get carried away to where people believe that anybody that’s non-citizens comes into our country should be able to get the same benefit as those that actually work for it

You are making my point. The government have enabled this behavior and way of thinking. They have no incentive to become a citizen. What is the benefit of being a citizen?

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They’ve been using it as a “slush fund”, and then labeling it an “entitlement”! It’s NEVER been entitlement for those who CONTRIBUTED to it! Only for those who helped themselves to it!

Thank you. No one is getting any free money from SS. There sure is a lot of complain first, understand later, on this site.

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My father is a legal alien with a green card. He owned a company and paid taxes. He’s not a citizen, but here legally. He gets social security.

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Many don’t collect OASDI, but many do.

  1. We have reciprocal agreements with several countries to pay their ex-pats living here Social Security and they do the same for ours. I’m not worried as much about this because there is a reconciliation and balancing process - we save money in some cases because the cost of living in a few of these countries is much lower than the US.
  2. Non-citizens with valid work permits can collect Retirement benefits and SSI benefits. See Can noncitizens receive Social Security benefits or Supplemental Security (SSI)? for more details.
  3. The Biden Administration has been using SSI (Supplemental Security Income) to pay people paroled into the US. See https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-11051.pdf
  4. I have seen this personally - a man entered the US legally as an immigrant at age 65. He started drawing SSI benefits almost immediately, and it was almost as much as Retirement Benefits, after never having worked here a day in his life, and he came from a country with no reciprocal agreement. He received a green card in about a year, and became a citizen despite not being able to speak or understand english 3 years after that. (There is some kind of exemption for learning english if you are over a certain age. I didn’t know that until I met the man.) I thought you had to live here 5 years to become a citizen. Things have changed.

The first problem is that government operations of the Social Security “Trust Fund” is a disaster.

There should be no payments out of OASDI for non-citizens, period.

We need to privatize Social Security. Social Security as a program is institutionally racist - working black men in particular pay into it all their lives and tend to die at 67 never receiving a dime of benefits or only a couple of years worth. There is no “inheritance” option to Social Security - no generational wealth for all that money paid in.

So you want non-citizens to pay in, but not ever get their money back?

That’s not true. But Social Security is only one of many arterial bleeds from the treasury.

There are several kinds of payments out of what we call “Social Security.” The real name of “Social Security” is OASDI - Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Income.

Old Age - These are Retirement Benefits, which requires you to pay in so many quarters over the years. Some fraud here - about a million dead people manage to cash their checks each month. But the SSA is the one federal agency that has the Master File of Deaths (aka SSDI “Social Security Death Index”) - they are better than most federal agencies in weeding out payments for deaths, but even their records are poorly maintained.

Then there’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This is where the illegals, refugees, and asylum seekers/grantees are being paid. See https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-11051.pdf

Survivors - payments for children that have lost their primary income earner.

Disability Income - someone who cannot work. This is where there is a huge chunk of fraud - an entire industry of corrupt doctors and specialists who take payments for writing the right language in the application for DI.

One crime here is that the SSA refuses to share the Master File of Deaths with other Federal Agencies, so there are payments from other agencies that get sent out and cashed for dead people. Massive fraud in the billions - all because of a bunch of bureaucrats who refuse to assist other bureaucrats.