Tim Chapman reported last week:

To qualify for full Social Security benefits, a worker must register 10 years of work. Under current law, illegal immigrants who obtain legal status can use their previous illegal work history to apply for Social Security benefits.

A compromise immigration bill pending right now in the U.S. Senate (sponsored by Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Mel Martinez (R-FL)) comes at a time when our nation is facing an enormous crisis on the entitlements front. A recent report moved the year in which Social Security will go broke from 2041 to 2040. Congress cannot afford to keep the promise of Social Security to its own citizens, let alone illegal workers.

To remedy the situation, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) has offered an amendment to the pending Senate immigration bill that would reverse this law to ensure that law-breakers are not rewarded for their past work at the expense of immigrants who have waited in line and American citizens.

Am getting word that the Ensign amendment, SA 3985, was killed this afternoon.

The Senate’s march towards Amnesty First, Enforcement Later (Never?) goes on.

***

Mary Katherine Ham can’t believe it:

Seriously, if you could see me now, I’m very Yosemite Sam. Very stampy and tantrumy and incoherent.

Just a few minutes ago, on the floor of the United States Senate, senators debated an amendment to the McCain immigration bill.

This is not, by itself, profanity-inducing.

But here’s the substance of the debate– Should ILLEGAL immigrants, once made legal by the McCain legislation, be entitled to receive the Social Security benefits they have paid into the system while ILLEGALLY using FRAUDULENT Social Security numbers STOLEN from actual, legal citizens of the United States of America.

The fact that this is even up for debate is just beyond insane. Everyone knows we will never have enough Social Security funds to serve, you know, actual citizens.

Every single one of those senators knows that, and they’re debating whether we should extend such non-existent, unsustainable, budget-busting, generation-saddling benefits to millions of people who fraudulently entered the system by stealing the identities (and sometimes ruining the credit) of legal Americans?!?

Sen. Ensign, God bless him, offered an amendment suggesting illegals should not be eligible for Social Security benefits accrued while illegal.

The U.S. Senate voted to kill that amendment, 50-49.

Are these guys freakin’ serious? I’m so disgusted I’m just hoping maybe my C-SPAN feed is faulty or I’m mistaken. I don’t think I am.

Nope. Dead on. MKH links to the vote info here.

Allah names names.

Start dialing.

***

Meanwhile, illegal aliens may soon be voting in North Carolina.

***

And a flashback on Social Security, illegal aliens, and the pandering (or as Kaus says, “Hispandering”) Bush administration from 2004:

[T]he Bush administration appears set this week to turn the ailing government pension program into an international relief fund for illegal alien workers who used counterfeit Social Security cards and stolen numbers to secure illegal jobs.

Unlike the bedtime stories I tell at night, I am not making this up.

This belated gift to the open-borders lobby and Mexican President Vicente Fox is part of a larger amnesty plan that has been in the works since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. So, why exactly are we rewarding a country that has been obstinately opposed to the War on Terror? Go ask Mr. Brilliant, Karl Rove. This I do know: It couldn’t have come at a worse time from either a fiscal or national security standpoint.

According to Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, benefits paid to retirees will exceed revenues in just 15 years. The pay-as-you-go system could go belly up as early as 2030. These projections don’t take into account the economic impact of the Bush proposal, which would allow untold millions of illegal aliens from Mexico to collect full cash benefits for themselves and their families from their home country — without having to work the required number of years that law-abiding American citizens must work to be eligible for payouts.

Reporter Joel Mowbray, who first exposed this treachery a year ago, noted that this raw deal may well cost overburdened U.S. taxpayers $345 billion over the next 20 years. Probably much more. As we know from experience, Social Security projections are notoriously off the mark.

The bureaucrats call this scheme “totalization.” Try total prostration. The proposed agreement is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from those who play by the rules to those who willingly and knowingly mock our own immigration and tax laws. What are we doing promising lifetime Social Security paychecks to day laborers in Juarez when we can’t even guarantee those benefits to workers here at home?

Unbelievably, the White House is trying to convince us to embrace this global ripoff because it “rewards work.” No, it rewards criminal behavior. The plan will siphon off the hard-earned tax dollars of American workers who may never see a dime of their confiscated earnings and fork it over to foreigners guilty of at least four acts of federal law-breaking: crossing the border illegally, working illegally, engaging in tax fraud and using bogus documents.

Giving money to scam artists will simply result in more fraud — not only by Mexican agricultural workers, but also by Middle Easterners such as Youssef Hmimssa, who provided fake Social Security numbers and fraudulent drivers’ licenses to members of an accused terrorist cell in Detroit. “If you have the right connection, you can get anything,” he testified before the Senate last fall.

The door is now open for all illegal aliens to collect retirement benefits using bogus Social Security cards. What’s next: survivors’ benefits for the families of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers?

Search for more info on totalization.