Immigrants swelling Social Security coffers
A few days late on this, but better that than never: taxes paid by so-called “illegal immigrants” have added massively to the Social Security system’s assets, reports Edward Schumacher-Matos in the Washington Post. Of course, somewhere between many and most of these immigrants will never draw benefits. As he points out, there’s a great political irony to this, since the most vocal nativists leading the charge against immigration “are mostly older or retired whites from longtime American families. The very people, in other words, who benefit most from the Social Security payments by unauthorized immigrants.”
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
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The agenda of the Washington Post editorial board is not for open borders, it’s for a modern day Bracero system – what Murdoch and Bloomberg espouse. That is not pro-immigrant or progressive.
Most Americans have conflicted views on immigration because they feel people should have the right to move here, or anywhere, but see that the system is currently constructed to screw them.
Living is a rural , conservative area of Texas/Oklahoma for some time I’ve seen little of the anti-immigrant mood that the Washington Post and Guardian write about obsessively. Ethnic mixing is common nowadays and mixed race kids are accepted and loved by their supposedly hateful grandparents – yes, even in ‘conservative’ Tea Party areas.
These East Coast Establishment stereotypes are drummed up to further an agenda that serves a particular faction of capital, which is again, a modern day Bracero program in the guise of immigration reform. It’s not a progressive agenda.
After dozing off during your interview with the narcoleptic think-tanker woman (I’m sure the facts were fine, but some of us live with a pulse), I was treated to sheer radio brilliance during your talk with the Greek public servant Mr. Verifakis. Both of you were too kind to Michael Lewis – Mr. Verifakis’s takedown of the truly execrable preppy take on Greece was magnificent.
Vanity Fair is a curious (OK, insane) amalgam of neocon slavering after uber-wealth mixed into “Free Tibet” liberal objections, and readers’ heads must be on auto-spin to keep up with the superficial contradictions in each issue.
Lewis, you say, like Obama, is “smart”- where’s the evidence for that? Verifakis deserves the word “smart,” and he makes one-millionth of what the bullshit-meister Lewis has made.
i read that article just last night and am happy to see that here’s a critique (not because i disagree with lewis but because i don’t know what to think).