When you look on your paycheck each week there's a category for Social Security deductions. In many cases, it's no small amount. So when you read a report out Monday that indicates as many as one in 12 foreigners obtaining new Social Security cards illegally use fake documents to receive the cards, it just makes the blood boil.
Somehow, somewhere in this great nation of ours we must become more organized in how we treat immigrants who settle here. It seems almost impossible to me that literally hundreds of thousands of foreigners could receive the federal Social Security assistance using fake documents. Unless we make a major improvement in this area, the Social Security system is doomed.
Terrorism aside, the drain on the Social Security system from these newcomers using fake documents will tax the system beyond imagination. And it seems patently wrong that someone can receive benefits without providing any financial input into the system. Compound that when fake documents are used.
This is not a plea to limit immigration or impose hardships and burdens on those who seek to locate here. But fair is fair and if that many foreigners are using fake documents, the system itself is flawed beyond repair.
If we need improved coordination, then so be it. I hate the thought of creating yet another federal level of bureaucracy but at the same time, we cannot and will not accept this financial drain on the safety net for the elderly in this nation who funded the Social Security system through a lifetime of their hard labor.
And of course in the background of this new report there still remains the fear of terrorism. If it's that easy to obtain a Social Security card then you can begin to understand how the terrorists we so successful on Sept. 11.
We either need a new system or we desperately need to fix the current system that is obviously broken. And we need these changes now!