Meaning/binding power of the Affidavit of Support in family based immigration

[Hack_It]

I already explained that the place they worked for all their lives pays them back about $40-100 a month pensions. The retirees are starving in my former country. I don't see a lot of retirees from Western Europe flocking for a better life to the US. It's probably because their country is taking care of them. Not the same in the former Soviet Union.

I understand your grief about elderly people in your country. It is the same in Bulgaria - the country I was born. I have grand parents there who barely survive with their pensions. But think about it...it's a consequence of a wrong regime. All elderly people from the former "Eastern block" suffer the communism.

Perhaps, if medical care were not so expensive in the States, people wouldn't need Medicare/Medicaid. In Canada people's taxes pay for free medical care - so, it's still somebody's tax money - whether it is paying for your benefits now or for your benefits later.

Why should Social Security and Medicare be based on tax money. People should save money on their own to secure their future. And if they don't because they are reckless.....then they deserve to flip burgers at McDonalds after they retire.

consider it coming out of all the taxes H1B and F-1 people paid for but will not get to use since they went back to their countries.

You know F1s don't pay Social Security and Medicare and probably more than half H1s end up staying in the US.

 

[LucyMO]

of course, people on F-1 pay SS and Medicare taxes. Not all the time, but those here long enough do - I paid it for quite a few years. People on H1 pay it for sure.

People should save money on their own to secure their future.

sure that'd be nice. But considering that average income per person is about $30,000, and in some states that's median income for a family, I just don't see many people being able to save a lot of money to hold them over for about 20 years after they retire (suppose, they need $400 a month for 20 years for medical insurance only+$5,000 deductible per year = that's about $196,000 and that doesn't include living expenses) . Heck, I just can't see somebody coming here at a ripe age of 45 years old, earning $30K per year for 20 years and being able to save $200K for insurance alone for the time they retire. Can you? Are you saving for yourself? or, perhaps, when you are 75, unable to work and you just ran out of your "saved" money - will you, perhaps, be assured that this country will not leave you to die without medical care? that somebody 40 years from now wouldn't say it to your face - well, you should have worked hard and saved your money for your health insurance, and now that you don't have any money, I don't want to support you with my tax money.

It's a balance. Somebody has to keep it. We pay it forward.

 

[Hack_It]

You are right...F1s pay those after their fifth year.