Gracias Goes All-In on Social Security!

In the town hall with Musk, Mr. Gracias started by discussing “non-citizens” getting SSNs. But he quickly (and without explanation) pivoted to implying all of these people “got asylum” (i.e. their immigration status was “asylum seeker”). Here, he is saying that the “vast majority of the growth” is from people seeking asylum. He uses 400,000 as his baseline, so “the growth” for FY23 is about 500,000 and for FY24 is about 1.5 million. “Vast majority” is not exactly a precise term, but let’s say that’s 75%. That means in FY23, 375,000 of these SSNs were issued to asylum seekers, and in FY24, 1.1M of them were. Is that true? Who knows! If it is true, why wouldn’t you put up a chart showing it? Your guess is as good as mine! How does this relate to changes made to allow (legal) Temporary Protected Status for people fleeing countries in chaos, like Ukraine, Venezuela, and Haiti? I hope you don’t want to know the answer, because you’re not going to get it from Mr. Gracias!