Internet hoaxes and immigration statistics - NY Newsday 4/22

Saul Friedman
Family & Relationships


April 22, 2006

Some of our wisest readers have fallen for the Internet hoax that refuses to die - the allegation that members of Congress don't support Social Security because they don't pay into it.

This hasn't been true since 1983, when members of Congress, the president and virtually every government employee were shifted from the federal retirement plan to Social Security.

Now, as part of the heated debate over immigration, mythmakers would have you believe the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living among us are about to overwhelm Medicaid, Medicare, the welfare rolls and Social Security. Before you fall for it, remember the mythmakers (or their forebears) are the same people who warned against the tides of immigration that instead have enriched us.

Where would New York and Long Island be without waves of new people coming to our shores? Yet here is a screed from something called the "U.S. Border Patrol": "Illegal immigration is the biggest threat to America ... the politicians are afraid to take action for fear of offending legal immigrants who are registered to vote."

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-bzsaul4710272apr22,0,7758650.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

You try to confuse the reader by using numbers for legal and illegal immigrants. The internet hoax is people who are against illegal aliens entering the country, are racist toward immigrants. You make this point by using extremist groups, as an example.

Wouldn't it be better to raise the number of people we let in from Latin America each year? Not as guest workers, but a path to citizenship. If immigrants have options in the workplace, they wouldn't me at the mercy of unscrupulous employers. They wouldn't be intimidated to organize, demand better working conditions, health insurance and pay. In other words, the same things Americans are fighting for, but businesses have been undermining, by using second-class citizens.

He's saying that the Internet rumor is of illegal immigrants coming here to sponge off welfare and Medicare and Social Security, when in fact, they can't collect unless they're legal.