Immigrants Face Loss of Social Security Benefits: Who’s at Risk?

Immigrant rights groups are very worried about a move by President Donald Trump’s administration to mark thousands of living people as dead. This takes away their Social Security numbers and makes it harder for them to get to services they need.

Activists called the move “digital assassination,” and it’s a new part of the policy that makes it harder for migrants who were legally living in the U.S. because of programs put in place by previous administrations.

The immigrants who were impacted were in the “Master Death File” of the Social Security Administration. They are legally in the United States. This makes them almost invisible to the system, so they can’t use their Social Security number to do simple things like open a bank account or get to government or financial services.

The White House said that the strategy was necessary to stop people from coming to the US illegally. “By removing the monetary incentive for illegal immigrants to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport,” a spokesman said. But this claim goes against the legal standing of many of the people who are harmed.

Some people who work in human rights and community leadership have said that the measure is wrong. They say that what is really at stake is the daily lives of thousands of people who are now facing legal, financial, and bureaucratic problems because of what they call an extreme and dehumanizing strategy.

Who will be harmed by not having a Social Security number?

Because of the controversial law, the issue is now mostly about the more than 6,300 immigrants whose parole was revoked and whose names and Social Security numbers were added to a government database that was previously only used for dead people.

The people who were affected were identified by the Department of Homeland Security as foreigners on temporary parole who were supposedly on the FBI’s terrorist watch list or had criminal records. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity. The government, on the other hand, has not provided any proof to back up these claims.

The move led to an action that had never been done before: adding these living people to the “Master Death File,” a record kept by the Social Security Administration since 1899 that has more than 142 million entries. People in the United States can prove their deaths through this database. If someone uses it, it can affect their legal identity, their ability to get services, and their finances.

The White House has started calling this file the “Master File of Ineligibles,” which seems to be an attempt to change what it does. This supports the idea that the goal is to keep people in this file from getting government benefits and services, even though they are legally in the country.

Customs and Border Protection sent written notices to everyone affected by the measure on April 8 that their release had been revoked. This was the last step in it.