There is an email going around in that urban legend fashion so popular with non-thinking and irrational conservatives who regularly drink the Rush Limbaugh / Fox News Kool-Aid that claims to be driving a petition to appeal to Obama (“regardless of whether you like him or not”) to veto a bill to give social security benefits to “illegal aliens.”

This, of course, is not what is happening or what the bill in question is about. What the email is about is fear-mongering and deception. What the bill is regarding is giving social security benefits to American citizens who were once illegal but now legal immigrants. Not aliens. Citizens. True, they weren’t born in the United States. True, they were once considered “illegal,” a loaded term to be sure. But they have since obtained their citizenship and have probably been productive, tax-paying (if not income, certainly sales taxes) citizens. Many of them have children who are natural born Americans who have been paying into the social security system for years.

Citizens. Not “illegal aliens” as the deceptive email suggests.

Check it out your self: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/socialsecurity.asp

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