Barnhart Testifies On Social Security Cards And Immigrants

There have been many calls for dramatic tightening up of the requirements for issuance of Social Security numbers and Social Security cards as a means for controlling illegal immigration. There have even been calls for issuing new Social Security numbers to all Americans. Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart testified on July 26 to the House Ways and Means Committee on the problems associated with some of these proposals. After noting but not detailing that SSA already has budget problems, she said the following:

Currently, each year staff of the agency devotes approximately 3,300 work years of effort to the SSN card issuance process. Because of the need to interview everyone receiving a new card, and examine original documents, last year’s estimate indicates that we would need an additional 67,000 work years to issue everyone a new card. This would require hiring approximately 34,000 new employees if we were required to complete the work within two years and 14,000 new employees to complete the work in five years. As noted, this estimate assumes replacing cards for 240 million individuals, which the Administration has not proposed. An approach that would mandate new tamper resistant cards to be issued only during the normal course of initial issuance and reissuance would involve significantly less additional costs. For a phased approach that limited new cards to only the approximately 30 million people who change jobs at least once during a year and the additional five million young people reaching age 14, the cost would be approximately $1.5 billion per year, using last years cost numbers.