OIG Report: Social Security Administration Paid $11.6 Million to Dead Puerto Ricans
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An Inspector General report for the Social Security Administration flew under the radar when it was issued in August, and the administration refused to answer Breitbart News’s inquiry about the findings that reveal $11.6 million in payments were paid to dead people in Puerto Rico.
The findings of the report stated:
SSA issued approximately $11.6 million in payments after death to 149 beneficiaries and 4 representative payees who died in Puerto Rico from January 1992 through December 2016. Identifying and correcting these discrepancies will prevent approximately$1.4 million in additional improper payments after death over the next 12 months. We also identified 33,258 non-beneficiaries who were deceased according to Puerto Rico Department of Health vital records but whose death information was not in SSA’s Numident [“Numerical Identification System,” is the Social Security Administration’s computer database file of an abstract of the information contained in an application for a United States Social Security number].We could not determine why the deaths were not in SSA’s Numident or whether Puerto Rico reported the deaths to SSA. Implementing EDR [Electronic Death Registration] should help ensure Puerto Rico deaths are properly and timely reported to SSA.The Numident contained death information for two of the four representative payees; however, SSA had not replaced the representative payees. In several prior audits, we found SSA did not always replace representative payees after it posted death information to their Numident records.
The Inspector General recommended that the Social Security Administration “take action” to identify the 149 deceased beneficiaries and representative payees and to add more than 33,000 deceased non-beneficiaries to its database.
“SSA agreed with our recommendations,” the report stated.
Breitbart News asked the administration’s press office via email three questions:
1. Have any of these recommendations been put in place at SS?
- Take action on the 149 deceased beneficiaries we identified.
- Take action on the four deceased representative payees we identified.
- Take action on the 33,258 deceased non-beneficiaries we identified to add their deaths to the Numident, as appropriate.
2. Have any funds been recovered?3. Has an EDR for Puerto Rico been put in place?
Breitbart News followed up on its inquiry with five phone calls to the press office and extended the deadline for responding several times. The final deadline was noon Tuesday.
In the OIG report the objectives and background reads, in part:
To (1) determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) made payments to beneficiaries and representative payees who were deceased according to Puerto Rico Department of Health vital records and (2) identify non-beneficiaries who were deceased according to Puerto Rico vital records but whose death information did not appear in SSA records.Puerto Rico Department of Health provided us a vital records data file of the personally identifiable information of approximately 568,000 numberholders who died in Puerto Rico from January 1992 through December 2016. We matched the data against SSA payment records and Numident.
“The Social Security Administration assigns Social Security numbers, and administers the Social Security retirement, survivors, and disability insurance programs,” the federal USA.gov website stated. “They also administer the Supplemental Security Income program for the aged, blind, and disabled.”
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House Pushes Amnesty, Subsidy for Lower-Tech, Cheap Labor Farms
House Pushes Amnesty, Subsidy for Lower-Tech, Cheap Labor Farms
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House leaders will introduce a farmworker amnesty plan on Wednesday that will provide citizenship to at least one million illegal migrants and to a future flood of visa workers who agree to work on U.S. farms for eight years.
The “Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019” amnesty would create two huge streams of low-wage labor for farm companies and likely for meatpackers and other agricultural employers.
One stream would be from the population of one million existing farmworker illegal aliens who will be amnestied and redefined as “Certified Agricultural Workers” so they can get green cards and citizenship after several years — regardless of the “public charge” rule which bars welfare-reliant migrants from citizenship.
The second stream would come from illegal aliens who sign up to be legal H-2A visa farmworkers and from a treasure box of 40,000 green cards per year for employers to pay their lower-wage H-2A workers.
The bill also changes the existing H-2A farmworker visa program by setting a 3.25 percent cap on annual wage growth and by allowing some H-2A workers to work year-round for dairies or non-agriculture companies.
The “modernization act” will preserve the pre-modern, lower-tech, lower-productivity sectors in the agricultural economy by allowing dairy, fruit, and berry companies to avoid investment in labor-saving, productivity-boosting machinery.
The amnesty legislation will likely be welcomed by progressives even though it will cut the marketplace wages for Americans and for H-2A farmworkers and will also reduce the economic incentives for investing in new labor-saving machinery or techniques, such as vertical farms.
But the amnesty side of the bill would help Democrats by creating a new immigration path for at least 150,000 workers and their families each year. The new inflow will add to the current inflow of 1.1 million legal immigrants who help suppress wages and raise real-estate prices, and it will help turn more GOP-held districts in Democratic blue.
The lead GOP legislator backing the bill is Washington state Rep. Dan Newhouse, who owns fruit orchards in Washington state. The bill is likely to be backed by a small number of GOP legislators from dairy districts. The farmers in their districts want cheap migrant labor because milk prices are low, robotic cow-milkers are expensive, and the cost of migrant labor is rising in President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” economy.
The bill mandates the use of the “E-Verify” program to exclude illegal aliens from the agriculture sector. That mandate gives legislators a talking point to be used against voters who oppose the amnesty. But Section 303 of the bill effectively kills the existing E-Verify program before the promised rollout of a to-be-designed replacement program.
The bill does not include any compensation for Americans who will face lower wages — and receive less workplace investment in machines — once the agriculture industry can import a replacement army of lower-wage labor.
The bill does not include subsidies for the robots or other labor-saving technology that could reduce the incentives for farm companies to hire many illegal aliens or H-2A visa workers.
The farmworker bill mimics Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee’s “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants” legislation. Lee’s bill has already been passed by the House as H.R.1044, and it offers a green card subsidy to an industry that uses cheap imported labor to bypass American graduates. Lee’s S.385 legislation, however, has been stopped in the Senate by Sen. Dick Durbin, who wants a bigger increase in immigration.
Many American farms still rely on stoop labor, long after the industrial revolution of the 1800s.
Next time you enjoy radishes in your salad, remember the farmworkers like these Oxnard workers, who harvest the food that we eat. #WeFeedYou #Calor #Ovetime4FarmWorkers
The U.S. farmers’ reliance on cheap labor has reduced their incentive for the use of machines, while farm companies in many other countries are increasing their competitive advantage by investing in machines:
So far, the White House has shown little interest in the amnesty bill, partly because it does not want to trade away unpopular concessions before a major workforce deal in 2021. The McClatchy news service reported October 28:
Last week, Theo Wold, a special assistant to President Donald Trump for domestic policy, came to Capitol Hill to meet with members and senior aides involved in negotiations.Wold is an ally of Jared Kushner, a senior adviser and son-in-law to Trump who has tried to be a bipartisan dealmaker on immigration overhaul legislation in the past.Congressional sources familiar with the meeting said they saw Wold’s participation as a positive sign there could be some openness to support for the bill within the White House — or at least no active effort to try and thwart it.A senior administration official confirmed Wold’s attendance but said the White House is unlikely to back the legislation.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is opposing the bill. “The name of this mass amnesty bill name should be changed to the Mandatory Farm Labor Act of 2019,” FAIR said.
If the Farm Workforce Modernization Act was true to its name, it would focus on automation (mechanization loan guarantees, perhaps?) This would be an important step in eliminating industry dependence on cheap foreign labor. #aglaborflyin19
Farm groups are welcoming the subsidy of cheap labor:
CORRECTION: America's farmers, ranchers, and growers urge their congressional members to give them an endless supply of cheap foreign labor. #aglaborflyin19 twitter.com/FarmerCoop/sta …
The bill is backed by companies in the fruit and berry business:
Farmers, ranchers and growers urge congressional members to support the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which provides meaningful #aglabor reforms that will help the U.S. agriculture industry. #aglaborflyin19
Apple harvesters rely on migrants to pick the fruit by hand:
Like apples? Josep sent us this video from the apple harvest in Washington State. Let's hear it for these hard working women & men. #WeFeedYou
But several U.S. companies, such as Abundant Robots, are hoping to sell apple-picking robots to replace the workers:
Companies in high-wage countries have developed machines to harvest grapes, even as American grape growers lag behind:
Planning on enjoying a nice glass of wine after work? Let's raise our glasses to the #farmworkers who work hard to harvest the wine grapes. Josep shared this video with us from Sonoma, where he and his coworkers are harvesting wine grapes. #WeFeedYou
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