I don't understand the issue about giving Social Security retirement payments to illegal aliens. My understanding is that a person must be a US citizen or have a green card to get a social security account. If an illegal alien has a social security card he must have lied somehow to get it. Based on what I read, a lot of the illegal aliens gain employment by using someone else's social security number, or simply have a fake number. (It is not clear why the Social Security Administration would not be aware that funds were being creditied to a fake account number.) My question is, how does the government identify illegal aliens and determine how much an illegal alien paid into someone else's account, or to fake accounts? A person has to pay into social secuity for at least 10 years in order to be eligible for retirement payments; surely even incompetent government organizations could identify the illegal person within 10 years. Perhaps the government bureaucrats just aren't interested in actually doing anything about the illegal aliens.