I’m not sure what I found more surprising. That the US government has a rule that allows you to collect social security disability benefits because you don’t speak English or that we are changing the rule to make collecting on those grounds more difficult.
Yes, someone (somewhere) made it legal for people who don’t speak English, in America, to collect Social Security disability insurance benefits, instead of finding work.
As you attempt to organize your outrage,
The inability to communicate in English does not render people unable to perform work, but under the Disability Insurance program’s qualification standards, it does make it easier for them to receive benefits.
As a former administrative law judge described it, if a claimant were 45 years or older, limited to sedentary work, and claimed an inability to communicate in English, they were a “slam-dunk for benefits.”
Even in Puerto Rico. Yes. Non-English Speakers in Puerto Rico (where Spanish is the primary language) could claim Social Security disability benefits because they do not speak English.
Talk about perverse incentives.
And there is no evidence that a condition of receiving benefits under that “qualification” required you to learn English. In other (other) words, show up, file a claim, the court’s hands are tied, so you get paid to do nothing. An expensive nothing.
Using The Heritage Foundation’s Social Security model, we estimated that eliminating the grid factors would reduce the Disability Insurance program’s 75-year shortfall by 41%. In combination with 15 other commonsense reforms, policymakers could eliminate the program’s entire shortfall and allow for a nearly 50% reduction in the Disability Insurance payroll tax.
The Rules, They Are a-Changing
The source of the data for the impending rule change originates from the Obama administration.
The new rule, set to take effect April 27, will end that by eliminating the inability to communicate in English as a qualifying factor in Disability Insurance benefit determinations.
The rule stems in part from evidence gathered during an Obama administration initiative to evaluate the appropriateness of the medical-vocational grid factors—which include age, education (including the ability to communicate in English), and experience—in the determination of Disability Insurance benefits.
The data indicated that there is nothing about any of these factors that prohibits someone from new work. That short of an actual physical or mental disability, anyone regardless of age, education, or language proficiency could obtain and keep a job in the US.
Keep that in mind if some tin-foil-hat nut sees this and starts yelling about bigotry and xenophobia. You white men hate [insert name here]!
If it comes up, maybe on social media, ask them; well, if that’s a big deal to you, doesn’t it make more sense to use the money we can save by not paying these claims to able-bodied people to teach non-English speakers English?
If that sets them off, ask them if we should teach everyone Spanish? Seriously, the goal here is to make it possible for them to work which appears to be the only barrier to compromise. Even here in New Hampshire Democrats are against asking able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid benefits to work (or go to class, or to learn a skill).
They think that’s wrong.
Which makes them less the party of the working man (or woman, or whatever) and more the party of the unemployed. They don’t want you to work. You’re only “job” is to vote for Democrats. And they mean to make sure you get paid to do that no matter what language you speak.
So, I guess we know where the rule came from and (now) where it’s headed. Out the door.
Good riddance.
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