U.S.-Mexico Totalization Agreement Raises Questions

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U.S.-Mexico Totalization Agreement Raises Questions

TSCL’s review of the Totalization Agreement and related documents raises a number of significant questions. For example, no new estimates of the cost of the agreement to the Social Security Trust Fund were released to TSCL.

Among the documents released to TSCL was a statement by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that says, “Social Security actuaries have estimated that a Totalization Agreement with Mexico would have negligible long-range costs for the Social Security Trust Funds… Costs to the U.S. Social Security system are estimated to average about $110 million per year over the first five years.”

This estimate appears to be one evaluated by the Government Accountability Office in 2003. The GAO found that “the cost of a Totalization Agreement with Mexico is highly uncertain, more so than previous agreements, because of the large number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States.”

January 2007