Claim: E-mailed petition advocates denying social services to immigrants.
Examples:[Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Not a citizen? NO BENEFITS!
Petition to Require citizenship to be eligible for social services in the United States
No amnesty and No free services for illegal immigrants.
Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.
PETITION FOR PRESIDENT BUSH
If you don't forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know. Thank you!!!
To add your name, click on "forward". You will be able to add your name at the bottom of the list and then forward it to your friends.
THE 2,000TH PERSON - SEND IT ON TO THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS:
President@WhiteHouse.gov
SOCIAL SECURITY PETITION
As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow illegal aliens access to Social Security benefits. Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship for eligibility to that social service. You can Agree or Delete. Instructions are below.
PETITION FOR: President Bush, Gov. Schwarzenegger and Congressman Dana Rohrbacher Gentlemen and Mr. President: The petition below is a protest against what the senate voted on recently which was to allow illegals to access our social security! We demand that you and all congressional representatives require citizenship for anyone to be eligible for social services in the United States. We further demand that there not be any amnesty given to illegals, and NO free services or funding, or payments to and for illegal immigrants. We are fed up with the lack of action about this matter and are tired of "paying" for services to illegals!
Tell Senor Fox to pay for his own people! !
Variations: The following preface was later added to the second of the two examples cited above:
Our Granddaughter in Ca. was turned down for a teaching job, because she only had one yr. of Spanish. She got a job at a private school. She now teaches in Rancho Cucamonga, second grade.
Had an interesting conversation with a lady of Hispanic origin last week. She told me that she planned to come down to St. Mary's and get a job in Admissions (where I work). When I pointed out that we didn't have any openings, she advised me that "soon" current employees will have to be fired to hire bi-lingual employees. According to this lady, the Spanish speaking people of the US are going to demand that all public facilities - like hospitals, courthouses, etc. - be staffed by people who read, speak and comprehend Spanish. We hear about the silent majority but I think we are going to have to speak up or find ourselves a conquered country. That would be an interesting historical note - greatest land in the world conquered by Mexico without ever firing a shot! Think about it.
Origins: Although the above-quoted petition can't be declared "false" because it addresses a genuine issue (albeit rather poorly), a number of major flaws make it ill-suited for its intended purpose:
As with all petitions sent via e-mail, the mechanics of circulating them pose a number of problems. Forwarding a petition through e-mail duplicates the names of hundreds and thousands of earlier signatories as each recipient adds his name and
then fans out his copy to multiple acquaintances. Moreover, there is no verification or validation process to ensure that completed copies were actually "signed" by the persons listed (rather than having their names added by someone else). And (as noted in the text), any "break" in one branch of the chain caused by recipients' not forwarding the petition along to others means that all the collected signatures unique to that branch are permanently lost.
The designated target for completed petitions — the general e-mail address for the White House — is a poor choice. Petitions seeking legislative changes are best addressed to the legislative branch of government (i.e., the members of Congress who represent the petitioners).
The petition's goals are neither clear nor well-articulated. One line states that the aim of the petition is to "require citizenship to be eligible for social services in the United States," but the following line advocates "No free services for illegal immigrants." Which is it? Persons with permanent residency status are neither citizens nor illegal immigrants — are they to be barred from obtaining social services as well? How broadly are the rules going to be applied? Should abused children be denied protective services unless they can demonstrate legal residency? Should emergency medical treatment be withheld from patients until they can provide documentation of their immigration status? In the absence of a national ID card, what standard would be used for documenting eligibility?
Given all of these issues, we'd have to classify this petition as largely ineffective and pointless. (The second example reproduced above also misrepresents a recent congressional vote regarding payment of Social Security benefits.)
Last updated: 11 July 2006
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp
