[lbo-talk] Immigration and Retirement

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Tue Apr 18 12:12:22 PDT 2006


Marta wrote:
> How do immigrants prepare for retirement? I'd be very interested in
> learning about that. Some of the migrant workers -- say, those who
> leave their countries as teenagers and never go back home -- pay into
> only one country's retirement system. Others have already paid into
> their home countries' retirement systems for some years -- I did when
> I was in Japan -- and then pay into their adopted countries'
> retirement systems. Can those of us who fall into the latter category
> in the US draw on more than the US retirement system? Does that
> depend on whether you retain your home country's citizenship? If we
> can draw on only the US retirement system and lose what we PAID into
> our home countries' systems, we will be shortchanged!
>
> --
> Yoshie

You would probably be eligible for your work retirement in Japan esp if it was within a corporation's retirement plan. But we are still talking about a nation, the nation of Japan. So if you cannot draw on what you contributed in one country laws should be changed so that one can. That only seems fair. People should not be punished because they work in other countries.

Marta</blockquote>

Yes, the laws should be changed, in keeping with changed reality of global migration, where workers might grow up in one country, work some in another country, work some more in yet another country, and retire at home or in yet another country. There ought to be multilateral agreements that allow workers either to transfer credits (for having paid into pension and health care systems) to the systems of their countries of residence or draw upon multiple countries' systems.

This year, though, nothing positive is likely to come about. The recent giant immigrant rights marches, however, probably -- I'll keep my fingers crossed -- scuttled the dreadful idea of making unauthorized immigration and assistance to undocumented immigrants federal crimes.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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