ILLEGAL BENEFITS

After watching the reactionary, lowest-common-denominator diatribe of the sixth-grade intelligence exhibited by CNN's Jack Cafferty and his incessant bleating about so-called illegal aliens and the wealth of benefits they purportedly have lavished upon them after trekking across the Arizona dessert to take all our high-paying, lettuce-picking jobs, I recalled a recent story.

The New York Times reported that workers using fake Social Security cards have contributed $7 billion a year since the 1980s.

A UPI story casts it as such:

A brisk business in fake identification and SSNs quickly grew, provided legal cover for the employers and, so far, a windfall for the SSA.

An SSA official told the Times the administration estimated 3/4 of illegal immigrants — estimated by the Census Bureau at 3.8 million households — pay payroll taxes. Those immigrants are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits.

A little information goes a long way in debunking the xenophobic arguments TV news amplifies with utter lack of basis or relevance.