What Social Security Isn’t Meant to Do

[EV_Ares]

To hear some in Congress tell it, the federal government urgently needs to expand its electronic employment verification system, E-Verify, to all corners of the country and force every business to use it. But a hearing in the House last week raised serious questions about the costs and collateral damage of that expansion, the latest scheme by hard-liners to slam the door shut on unauthorized immigrant workers.

E-Verify is a voluntary program in which employers can check workers’ names against databases kept by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. About 61,000 employers have signed up. A bill by Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, and Tom Tancredo, the Republican anti-immigration extremist from Colorado, would require each of the 7.4 million employers in the United States to participate in E-Verify — and to fire anyone, citizen or otherwise, who cannot prove that he or she has the right to work.

Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut and president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, warned at the hearing that forcing Social Security to take on the enormous burden of immigration enforcement would be a harmful diversion from its core mission and could strain the bureaucracy to the breaking point.

That would have frightening implications for millions of people who are supposed to be served by the Social Security Administration, particularly the elderly and those who are disabled. With Social Security struggling to provide existing services and the sunset of the baby boom approaching, Ms. Kennelly said, now is no time to pile on more responsibilities. The backlog of pending disability cases at the initial level is more than 500,000, and more than 750,000 people who have appealed rejected claims are awaiting decisions. As of February, the average wait on an appeal was more than 500 days.

Link to entire article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opinion/12mon1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[ColbertWatcher]

1. WTF!?

"...forcing Social Security to take on the enormous burden of immigration enforcement..."

That's sounds like INS's job, employment verification sounds like the Labor Department's job.

Can't this administration do anything right?

[Toucano]

7. This administration can do something right.

It can systematically destroy every single federal agency and institution from the Justice Department and FEMA to the EPA and Social Security Administration.

Drug safety, food safety, product safety, emergency preparedness, highway and infrastructure safety, justice, education, immigration, all down the tubes.

Every single federal agency has been compromised under Bush.

The true mission accomplished.

[bean fidhleir]

2. I'm not sure what the problem is

It's only a database-lookup issue. Provide a web form where the employer puts in their employer id, the alleged ss number, and the first 3 letters of the prospect's family name. If that checks, the employer puts in the whole family name. If that checks, the employer is golden.

It's not rocket science, and making enough read-only copies of the database to handle the lookup load is fully automatable.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. If I understand correctly...

...the "Can't Run Government" Party (GOP) want to use Social Security funds to pay for work that is the responsibility of other departments, instead of paying benefits.

And, any information in the hands of republicans is not "just a database". Don;t forget, the GOP is the party that brought us the TSA terrorist watch list with Nelson Mandella on it, along with 3-year old children.

"Just a database" is a dangerous thing in the hands of the GOP.

[bean fidhleir]

4. Perhaps I don't understand it correctly

I haven't read the whole article because I don't want to concoct a login, but from the parts quoted above, it's only a lookup problem. I suppose there could be a hidden agenda to make ss staffers personally do the lookups themselves and report the results over the phone to employers, but that would be a money-wasting boondoggle too egregious even for the GOP to push.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Who knows?

When the GOP is behind something, they're never really behind it, you know what I mean? It would be bad enough if this was just giving the Social Security staffers were given jobs that take time away from helping people with their benefits. But, this may also divert parts of the Social Security budget to assist the GOP with their final domestic tracking solution.

[treestar]

5. Waste of money, too

It would make more sense to give people visas than to worry so much about aliens working. Makes them legal somehow and move on.