Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Very Sick Woman: Illegal Immigrants Getting Social Security Numbers at Border" video.

I'm Australian and have a SSN. I went to college in America (late 80s) and got one when I arrived. It never entitled me to anything other than to be in America and go to college. I had what David said is a restricted SSN. Every nation has some way to identify people who are there for longer than just a temporary trip. As in a holiday or to see friends or for business. I'm an engineer and plenty of people come to Australia for projects and some of those last several years. Because they are hear for so long and have to pay tax on their wages they have to be given an Australian Tax File Number. If they are staying long enough they also get an Australian Medicare number. There's nothing abnormal about this. We have the same types of people speaking the same fearmongering here and they get shot down every time with FACTS. But then fact never seem to stop these people.
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@victoriawilliams2786 Every country has them, its just they are a lot louder in America.
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@Remelox It was 35 years ago so not certain. But I did have a green card that had Social Security, my name and a number on it.
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@emsleywyatt3400 I think you might be right. It was 1984 and when I first landed in Hawaii there was an issue because there wasn't an SSN number on the my Student VISA paperwork. It was a chicken and egg thing. I had to get to Illinois and enrol to get my actual number but couldn't get there without a number being assigned. There'd been a change of some sort and all new students were supposed to have this specific temporary number type until they got enrolled but someone hadn't issued the numbers. It was a nervous 1/2 hour before one of the INS people realised that I was just the next foreign student that year with that problem. I don't know how it works these days. They must have some sort of system. There's still Australians going to the same college. The punter on the football team last year is from the same city I'm from.
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@Remelox For me it was 30+ years ago and back then it was SSN or SSN there was nothing else. I would expect it to be different these days. Actually the biggest thing that changed at that time was because of Rupert Murdoch. Not many people remember what he did, but it affected my life a lot. I'd done aerospace engineering and after a few years back here I tried going back to America but because of Rupert that was difficult. When he started buying Fox people just let him because they thought as an Australian he'd not be allowed to retain ownership under American Law. They expected to clean up when he was forced to sell stock. What they didn't know was he'd had American residency long enough to simply get dual citizenship and he did it very quietly. When they filed the court papers to force his hand he just flipped out his new passport. In response America cancelled all dual citizenships for about 20 years. That made it almost impossible for me to move to America. If I had been any other sort of engineer other than aerospace it would have been lot easier. In aerospace you need security clearances BEFORE you can get the job and you can't get the clearance without being in America and you can't get into America without the Visa and you can't get the work Visa without getting the job AND then it goes round in circles. So I know the system has changed several times since I was in college.
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