It sounds bizarre to me and probably to many of my readers but Social Security records are being used more and more as a means of verifying citizenship. As an example, Social Security has just put out an Emergency Message to its staff concerning inquiries from the public occasioned by the use of Social Security records to verify citizenship for purposes of Medicaid and the S-CHIP program.
My concerns with this are that the Social Security records were not set up as a means of verifying citizenship and that the Social Security Administration may lack adequate staff to deal with the inquiries and problems resulting from the inevitable errors in these records.
I would be interested in hearing how this is going from those who work in the field offices. How many inquiries are you getting? Is it a major part of your workload? Are the people making the inquiries upset, even desperate? How long is it taking to resolve problems? Is this is a big and growing problem or something Social Security can take in stride?
My concerns with this are that the Social Security records were not set up as a means of verifying citizenship and that the Social Security Administration may lack adequate staff to deal with the inquiries and problems resulting from the inevitable errors in these records.
I would be interested in hearing how this is going from those who work in the field offices. How many inquiries are you getting? Is it a major part of your workload? Are the people making the inquiries upset, even desperate? How long is it taking to resolve problems? Is this is a big and growing problem or something Social Security can take in stride?
8 comments:
"My concerns with this are that the Social Security records were not set up as a means of verifying citizenship."
If the Numident shows U.S. citizenship when applying for Social Security benefits you don't have to prove it again, so if it's go enough for claims why can't it be used for other things.
Right, A#1,it's perfectly appropriate. Handling the traffic is something else again. Nancy Ortiz
SSA should not be an immigration cop and do the job of DHS.
"Handling the traffic is something else again."
The record should be correct, so you either fix it now or when the person files for benefits. So fixing it now serves two purposes.
"SSA should not be an immigration cop and do the job of DHS."
SSA verifies citizenship all the time for SSN applications and claims, so I don't see a problem with this. Plus Naturization documents are verified through SAVE, so SSA isn't doing DHS's job.
Actually the Numi could be silent on the issue of citizenship and silence on this issue isn't an error. Old folks don't have proof codes like the younger folks do and from an agency business perspective, updating that data on the record now doesn't save the agency anything and likely takes resources better spent on other things. That's because it's quite likely that a person with no POC on the Numi files a claim, the proofs for the claim would serve as POC as well and the Numi could be corrected at that time. 1 contact, two things done.
Having people update the Numi for just citizenship now still requires a contact later. Might be a bit self-serving, but there is no program reason for updating Numi data when there isn't a claim or related SSA business process involved.
Since when did SSA acquire the title of repository of the citizenry's citizenship status?
While we've not noticed an increase in these types of inquiries, SSA is notthe proper agency to verify this data. Just one example of why relates to naturalized citizens. I've come across instances in claims situations where the individual never updated their citizenship status with SSA. Our records are only as good as what we're given.
Most SSA records established prior to the 1980's have no "verification" of citizenship--just allegations with subsequent tolerances. Many records, especially those with SSI involvement, have annotations of citizenship that are just bogus, coded as such by CR's too lazy or hurried to have actually obtained proper evidence. For other agencies to depend on SSA for verification of citizenship is just a joke.
You haven't seen an increase in traffic from S-CHIP yet because the beneficiaries are children - mostly native-born US citizens. If and when the health reform legislation is enacted, SSA will see much more traffic related to verification because the population that will be applying for health insurance is anyone who currently doesn't have health insurance. All 40 million of them.
Post a Comment