Social security and Mexico: a travesty.(The Immigration Economist)

There has been much confusing talk about a partially completed agreement between the United States and Mexico on allowing Social Security credits for cross-border workers. Immigration expert Marti Dinerstein presents the plain facts on the proposal, then Representative Dana Rohrabacher from California drives home what's at stake for our country.

WHAT'S REALLY BEING PROPOSED

Social Security agreements between countries are meant to accomplish two things: One is to prevent dual taxation of employees who work temporarily in another country and the employers who send them. The second is to guarantee an old-age pension to workers who end up paying into the Social Security systems of two countries, but earn insufficient credits to qualify for retirement from either of those countries alone.

Previous cross-country agreements on Social Security credits have benefited American workers and their employers, as well as foreign workers sojourning here, and the U.S. Congress has never voted against one. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has entered into what are called "totalization" agreements with 20 different countries.

This is how the agreements work: A corporation asks an employee to work abroad for a specified period of time. Both the employee and the employer have been paying Social Security taxes in the home country. Employees enter the foreign country legally with appropriate authorization, and leave when their temporary assignments are over. When the employees retire, they are eligible to collect benefits based on the total number of years worked in each country.

The proposed totalization agreement with Mexico, however, is a perversion of the 20 existing agreements that have been structured along these lines. Most Mexicans do not contribute to Mexico's retirement system; (only 40 percent of non-government workers participate in their country's social security system in any way; in the U.S., 96 percent of workers do.) Most Mexican workers make the decision to migrate to the U.S. on their own; they are not dispatched abroad by their companies. A majority enter the U.S. illegally.

The sheer size of the Mexican -born population in the U.S. is another anomalous aspect of this agreement. In 2000, an estimated 9.2 million Mexicans lived in the U.S. None of the other nations we've established Social Security reciprocity with have even 1 million citizens here, and eight of the countries have such tiny populations in the U.S. that the Census Bureau doesn't even track their numbers.