Shannon Benton
2007-03-30 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

A quick search of the phrase “Earnings Suspense File” on the Social Security Administration’s Web site doesn’t turn up much. It tells you that its acronym is “ESF,” that the agency wants to reduce the size of the file, and in one obscure and outdated document, even describes what the file actually is.

If the agency were fully transparent, it might say this: the Earnings Suspense File is used to track names and Social Security numbers that don’t match government records, and it almost doubled during the five most recent years tracked to an astonishing $585 billion in uncredited wages. The chief cause of the growth, according to the agency’s inspector general, is unauthorized work by noncitizens.

In other words, under current Social Security law, an immigration amnesty plan could result in millions of today’s illegal workers receiving billions of dollars in benefits from the U.S. Social Security system — even for work performed in the country illegally.

Earnings get dumped into the ESF when an illegal worker reports wages under someone else’s Social Security number or uses a fraudulent number. Due to a loophole under current law, an immigration amnesty plan would trigger a provision which would allow that worker to receive credit for those illegally earned wages, which would then be transferred into their new Social Security account — even though they broke the law by working in the country and potentially using somebody else’s Social Security number.

There have always been problems crediting wages to people’s individual records, and the problem can’t be blamed entirely on illegal immigration. Sometimes, an accidentally reversed digit in a Social Security number is enough to place a worker’s earnings into the ESF instead of their earnings record until the error is discovered and corrected.

But these types of errors don’t account for the massive growth in the file. Throughout the 1980s, for example, the ESF grew by an average of just $7.8 billion and 4.2 million wage reports per year; the number jumped to $57 billion and 9.3 million wage reports from 2000-2004, the most recent years tracked and released to our organization. That growth is mostly a result of minimal workplace enforcement efforts.

The floodgates are already open, even without the passage of a comprehensive immigration amnesty plan. When a worker becomes legalized, through sponsorship or marriage, for example, he receives a valid Social Security number, after which all of his wages earned — including illegally earned wages — become reinstated into his new Social Security account.

According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 50 percent of all reinstatements during some of the past few years to foreign-born workers have been for potentially unauthorized work.

It’s important to note that the ESF tracks wages, only a percentage of which would eventually have to be paid out in benefits upon the passage of an amnesty plan. Although the specific payout is not known, our conservative estimates place the figure north of $100 billion, and it could even exceed $200 billion.

Social Security’s trustees forecast that the Trust Funds will start paying out more than they’re taking in within a decade, and that they will be completely exhausted by 2040. We believe our lawmakers have an obligation to keep their promise to today’s beneficiaries and tomorrow’s retirees by putting Americans ahead of those who flouted our nation’s laws.

Shannon Benton is the executive director of The Senior Citizens League, based in Alexandria.