There were two interesting articles over the weekend about a deal with Mexico to allow illegal aliens from that country to get Social Security benefits (see "In the News," Jan. 6).  According to The Washington Times, the deal would allow the immigrants "to claim Social Security benefits for the work they performed while in the United States illegally, even if the illegal aliens committed felonies by using fraudulent Social Security documents to obtain their jobs."  

Here is another good excerpt from the same source:

Beyond the Senate's reckless decision, which the president, we now know, has supported for years, Social Security passed two other worrisome milestones last year. First, the "assets" in the Orwellian-named Social Security trust funds surpassed the $2 trillion level in 2006. Of course, every dime of those trillions will have to be redeemed from general tax revenues when baby boomers, and, if the president gets his way, former illegal aliens begin depleting the trust funds in about 10 years. Second, when Social Security trustees release their annual report this spring, they almost certainly will report that the present value of Social Security's unfunded liabilities now exceeds $5 trillion. It is simply incomprehensible that the president and so many other Republicans want to add to Social Security's $7 trillion fiscal milestone.

Insolvency may be even nearer than we thought.