Posted by Frank James at 12:19 pm CDT
Senate opponents of the immigration legislation that passed in that chamber last week frequently accused the bill's supporters of being so determined to pass it that they would even ignore profound flaws so long they could declare victory and leave town for the Memorial Day recess.
One element of the Senate bill opponents attacked as a glaring defect would allow illegal immigrants who've committed identity fraud by using stolen Social Security numbers to qualify for legal status.
There was an especially spirited debate over an amendment offered by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) Ensign's amendment would've disqualified illegal immigrants from receiving Social Security benefits for wages they were paid up to the time they gained legal status.
Ensign's rationale was that it would be unjust to identity-theft victims to allow illegal immigrants to gets benefits for periods when many were illicitly using someone else's Social Security number.
Ensign actually made a compelling case for his amendment. He told the story of a woman named Audra, a stay-at-home mom who was sent a bill for $1 million in back taxes by the Internal Revenue Service only to find that 218 illegal immigrants had been using her Social Security number.
To compound matters, when she tried to return to work, she was rejected by an employer who told her she was already employed at that very same company. She wasn't. Someone misusing her Social Security number was, Ensign said..
There was the Nevada construction worker Ensign spoke of who couldn't get unemployment because the state said his Social Security number showed he was working as a landscaper, another case of an illegal immigrant who had illegally used someone else's number.
Ensign even had examples of children whose Social Security numbers had been stolen by illegal immigrants. "In one case in Utah, a child apparently owns a cleaning company and works as a prep cook at two restaurants in Salt Lake City. That is a lot of responsibility, especially for an 8-year-old boy," Ensign said.
"These stories are shocking," Ensign said. "It is clear that illegal immigrants are purchasing false papers and using stolen Social Security numbers to obtain jobs. They are victimizing hard-working Americans, Americans who want to work. They are also victimizing these young children. The current Social Security policy and this bill will only make matters worse by granting benefits to those who are working here illegally."
Two of the Senate's main supporters of the overarching immigration bill, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) acknowledged that identity theft was terrible. But they shifted the argument to what they said was the unfairness of denying people who worked, albeit illegally, of benefits they paid into the system.
"... I am with the Senator from Nevada in trying to deal with identity fraud, but I separate myself from him when he says all illegal immigrants are involved in the identity fraud and, therefore, they should not get credit for what they have paid in terms of Social Security," Kennedy said.
"... It is important to focus on who would be hurt by this highly punitive proposal," said Kennedy. "Only immigrants who have attained legal status are eligible to receive Social Security. So everyone this amendment would affect will be legal residents under the terms of the bill. Many of them will even be citizens by the time they apply for Social Security. Those are the hard-working men and women this amendment seeks to penalize."
McCain, too, made the obligatory nod to the evils of identity theft. But he came down on the side of the illegal immigrants. "It is fundamentally unfair to collect taxes from these workers and then disqualify the taxes paid once the workers achieve legal status," he said.
"I believe instead of supporting the amendment, we should stand for the principle that people who worked and paid into the Social Security system for years should be able to depend on their retirement income to which they contributed."
The problem of identity theft should be taken up at another time, McCain said. Both Kennedy and McCain said that Social Security and Medicare funds have actually benefited from billions of dollars in payments from illegal immigrants over the years that those immigrants can't collect.
It was only fair that upon achieving legal status, the now illegal immigrants and their survivors be able to get some of this money back in the form of Social Security benefits, was their argument.
Kennedy and McCain's response to Ensign's identity theft concerns was in stark contrast to how riled up Congress was over just the potential of identity theft created by the Veterans Affairs Department's loss of a computer disk containing with the sensitive personal information of 26.5 million veterans.
Ensign was talking about real cases of identity theft related to illegal immigration with actual victims. Kennedy and McCain seemed disconnected from what Ensign was saying.
At one point, McCain even said "Identity theft is a serious issue. In fact, the highest rate of identity theft occurs in the State of Arizona. It happened to me and my wife. But this immigration bill isn't drafted to comprehensively address identity theft, and the amendment before us isn't going to do a thing to fix this problem."
It was striking that McCain didn't seem to make the connection between what he said about Arizona being the nation's identity-theft capital and it being a major entry point for illegal immigrants.
Also, Ensign wasn't talking about fixing the problem. He wanted to prevent illegal immigrants who were contributing to the problem of identity theft from obtaining benefits for the time when they illicitly worked under other people's Social Security numbers.
The Ensign amendment lost by one vote. But Ensign's proposal isn't going away. Ensign, a former congressman, will be working with many sympathetic House Republican members to revive his it.
It likely won't take much convincing for House Republicans to see things Ensign's way.
Many don't want to give illegal immigrants a path to legalization to start with. They certainly won't want to provide entitlement benefits to illegal immigrants, many of whom misused stolen Social Security numbers.
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Comments
There's a few different issues in play here. The first isn't really specific to immigration but is a general problem with the Social Security number space. There are only nine digits in a Social Security number meaning there are only one billion possible Social Security numbers. With 300 million Americans plus those who have passed away or left America since the 1930's, one assumes that if you just pick a random 9-digit number, you have a good chance of getting someone's valid Social Security number. Then add on the fact that Social Security numbers rarely if ever are changed, have no expiration dates, and are often battered old cards with few security features. No bank would dream of issuing a credit card with so few security features. If an illegal alien can manage to match a valid name to a valid Social Security number, they will be very hard to catch indeed, and even if they can't, counting on the government to track this sort of thing is chancy at best. A more secure system of Social Security numbers is needed.
The second issue is that a lot of this is an artifact of the fact that the 1986 amnesty law allowed the use of the Social Security card as proof of legal status in this country. The idea was that, after 1986, Social Security cards would only be issued to those legally in the country, and if a foreigner was in the country legally but ineligible to work, their Social Security card would say so. This puts a burden on the Social Security card that it was never intended to be able to meet. The Social Security card is intended to be a very simple document showing that a particular person has a particular number. It was never intended to be a secure proof of identity, and the 1986 law created a large black market for forged Social Security cards that never existed before.
The central issue, of course, is the one that Frank James focuses on: working illegally is not a 'victimless crime' and hurts specific individuals, not just the legal labor pool in general. What is especially troubling about the Senate amnesty is that it requires that individuals show evidence of having worked previously (illegally) in the USA. The result is that, if the Senate bill becomes law as it stands, we will actually be directly and openly rewarding people for specific crimes against specific Americans.
There is, of course, one way in which Frank James' argument speaks against mass deportations: if we send all illegal immigrants home, it will be hard to subsequently prosecute them if evidence is subsequently found linking them to specific crimes against specific individuals. However, we do not need a mass amnesty either. Even Sensenbrenner, I think, might be talked into a guest worker program. We can create a guest worker program for a few years, but we should stop at that for now. When and if we have a system that works--where the law is respected by all--and clear legal precedents are established for dealing with the kind of problems that Frank James raises, then--and only then--should we consider a path to citizenship for those who have been able to clean up their act by then.
Posted by: David Ash | May 28, 2006 5:15 PM
Wow! I can't believe that any Senator in his or her rightful mind would shoot down Ensign's amendment. Americans, those of us who are legal, we are in danger of losing our rights to those who aren't here legally. This is unbelievable!!!!!!!
Posted by: William | May 28, 2006 6:56 PM
I can see how we were blindsided by McCain but this is the third time around for Kennedy. He helped increase immigration 40 years ago, saying something to the the effect that this legislation will not result in millions of people pouring across our border. Twenty years later and twenty years ago he helped gut enforcement provisions of the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Now he's really screwing the American people this time. How the good people of MA could continue to reelect that guy is beyond me. Kennedy has never taken a step, let alone walked a mile, in the average American's shoes.
Posted by: LWHJR1 | May 28, 2006 10:10 PM
This has been going on forever. I can remember my Grandmother complaining about the illegals back in the 1960s. I know that it upset my Grandmother because all of our family from the "old country" came through Ellis Island...the legal way. Same thing...different decade.
Posted by: lochnessmonster | May 29, 2006 7:14 AM
I agree with Ensign.
No benefits for those who stole someone else's identity.
As a veteran, I am very concerned about the issue.
I can understand someone coming here illegally. I can even understand using someone else's SSN to get a job here.
But a path to citizenship is where the rewards should end. Heretofore an illegal immigrant can work to do things right. Foregoing whatever SS benefits should be part of the "punishment" for wrong-doing. There is no need to add the reward of ill-gotten SS benefits.
Posted by: Jorge from Bloomington | May 29, 2006 7:15 AM
3 things are becoming obvious in this debate about immigration.
The first is the strategy of the supporters of the scumbags jumping the border. That is simple, if you support enforcing the law you are a racist. That idiot Navarette said it in a column yesterday, the New York Times said it twice in editorials last week. Kennedy says it almost every day.
So intimidation is the first ploy modeled after Hitler's idea that if you tell a BIG lie and repeat it often enough it becomes truth.
The second is the idea that American corporations will wither away and die without exploiting illegal workers.
Not true. Some things might cost a few cents more because they would have to pay legal workers more but nobody is going away. The people in Congress, being the only legal class of felons allowed in this country have decided that their perks and campaign contributions are more important than the country and the citizens who live in it.
They are at the root of the evil that is this problem.
Their objective is identical to the corporations they help. To reduce this country to a 2 class society. One rich and priviledged, one dirt poor and with no rights at all.
To put it simply Congress has seen how the rich and the politicians in Mexico kick around their ordinary citizens like dirt and they like what they see.They want the US to BE Mexico.
The third issue is connected to number 2. Local costs to communities. It is no accident that Congress has mandated policies that are visibly self destructive. Congress mandates medical care and schooling for illegals even though Congress does not mandate those things for citizens who have no financial means. By forcing states and cities to bear the heavy burden of these costs it furthers Congressional aims to wring the necks of the middle class and thereby reduce us to the level of peasants that much quicker.
It is imperative that the two party stranglehold on politics in this country be broken. Their allegiance, Democrat as well as Republican is to Big Business, not the people.
If this does not happen we will all become slaves.
It really is that simple. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, I guarantee you they would be sitting in a tavern somewhere saying" You know, I thought we fixed this problem. Looks like we need to do it again."
Posted by: mike | May 29, 2006 9:50 AM
Just remember one thing, and remember it well folks, "crime does pay."
Posted by: Sue | May 30, 2006 12:20 PM
I too am stunned by the scandalous actions of Senators like Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Bill Frist and John McCain. It has made my stomach turn to hear our lawmakers act as though they represent the interests of lawbreaking illegal aliens rather than those of the law-abiding American citizens who elected them to office.
I think those of us paying close attention to this issue should embark upon a grassroots effort to alert fellow citizens of exactly what our representatives are doing (including exactly which lawmakers are responsible).
My idea is to:
1) Submit Letters to the Editor to as many newspapers as you can.
In these letters, we should lay out the most unconscionable aspects of the Comprehensive bill passed by the Senate, including illustrating what its impact will be for our nation, such as laid out in painful detail by the Heritage Foundation among others in recent reports. At the same time, the insane provisons of this bill by can be exposed for what they are by contrasting them against facts that illustrate the profound, security, societal and economic implications of illegal immigration upon America. For example, we can highlight that this bill offers soc sec benefits to illegal aliens who used stolen and/or fraudulent documents to obtain them, a felony, at a time when our social security system is going bankrupt for America's children. The bill's "dream act" provision, which offers huge in-state college tuition discounts to anyone who can prove they are here in violation of federal law, is another shocker. Since law-abiding American students who are already grappling with tuition rates that have tripled, would be forced to subsidize these discounts, I don't think Americans would be pleased about that fact in the least.
We should highlight exactly which lawmakers voted for this mass amnesty bill in your given area, and hold them accountable by citing their own shocking statements said on the Senate floor to alert fellow citizens to just how apathetic US lawmakers have become to the best interests of their own constituencies.
Since we can't count on the wider mainstream media to accurately report the facts of this issue, let it be us to inform Americans of the rash, unconscionable deeds of US Senators as it relates to illegal immigration.
After laying out the facts, we should ask citizens to act in a variety of ways. The first is to ask concerned Americans to call their lawmakers to demand border security and to express their strong opposition of amnesty. The second is to ask Americans to and ask their friends, family and neighbors to do the same. We could even urge them to submit their own Letters to the Editor in as many papers as they can. Who knows, perhaps we can blanket the whole country with letter's that get the facts to the people. Finally, we should advocate how essential it is that Americans hold every politician accountable who voted for amnesty, come election time.
2. I have also been striking up a conversation about the topic of illegal immigration and the comprehensive bill with all I come into contact with, whether it be friends, family, neighbors and even workers to your home. I have gotten many to call their representatives.
If we unite, I know we can make a difference.
Posted by: buckaroo | June 8, 2006 9:01 PM
Identity theft is a non-crime as ruled by State Judges.
google southdakotagov.info how stole 100s of thousands using fake social security numbers with the FBI's blessing.
Posted by: Jack Reacher | July 5, 2007 1:53 AM