Do You Wonder Why We Will Never Win The War On Illegal Immigration?

I was aware that businesses were able to submit a potential employee's Social Security number to verify whether or not the S.S. number was a bona-fide one.
I got online and decided to check out that process and was amazed to see that yes, you can indeed verify a Social Security number's authenticity. But you are warned by the Social Security Administration:
Do not use SSNVS before hiring an employee.--You may not verify someone's name and Social Security number until after you have offered him or her a job.
And furthermore:
Doing so could subject you to anti-discrimination or labor law sanctions.
Is it any wonder we cannot win the war against illegal immigration?

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the House point man on immigration, yesterday said that a guest-worker program like the one proposed by President Bush is amnesty and that he cannot accept it in a final immigration bill.

"A guest-worker program that applies to illegal aliens already here is an amnesty," the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said in an interview with The Washington Times.

As the chief House negotiator in any House-Senate conference committee on immigration, he said voters will not accept a plan that amounts to amnesty, and said Mr. Bush's proposal would simply push the problem down the road.

"It seems to me that if you give these people the temporary cards, and the president talked a little bit about that yesterday out in Kansas, whether they are three-year cards or six-year cards or any other term, how do you get them to go back home when they expire?" he said. "We end up simply postponing the decision on what to do about illegal aliens until the end of the validity of these cards."

He also said when Congress and the White House agreed in December 2004 to increase the U.S. Border Patrol by 2,000 agents a year, then two months later the president only funded 210 positions, it "was embarrassing both to the administration and those of us who fought for increased assets for border protection in the intelligence bill and then were let down."

The Wisconsin Republican was a driving force behind last year's House immigration-enforcement bill, which calls for nearly 700 miles of border fence, requires employers to verify employees' Social Security numbers and allows border county sheriffs to enforce immigration laws.
He said he would prefer that Congress make sure border and interior enforcement is in place before a guest-worker program begins to operate.

"The guest-worker provision won't work without interior enforcement and verification of Social Security numbers. It's as simple as that," he said.

He also said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "should be ashamed of themselves" for sponsoring meetings with Luis Ernesto Derbez, Mexico's secretary of foreign affairs, in Chicago in December, after which the minister criticized the House bill.

"What they are doing is saying that it's OK to use fake Social Security numbers. I don't think that anybody who is in business ought to be condoning the use of false documentation," Mr. Sensenbrenner said. "If they continue promoting speeches by Mexican government officials then maybe they ought to register as an agent of a foreign government under the law."

A bigger problem is that, since we don't yet have a national biometric ID system (which we need YESTERDAY, IMO), verifying that a SS# is a real one accomplishes absolutely nothing.

My father, a retired foreign service officer in his 80s and living in the DC area, had a nearly year-long battle with the IRS, which demanded he pay taxes on income he had failed to report. What income? The income from his job as a busboy at a restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, of course.

Illegals use other people's SS#s, often along with the # owner's name so that it will pass the "verification" check with the SSA; their income gets reported by the employer to the IRS; and the IRS sends the tax bill to the # owner.

It's even worse, IMO.

Every year the SSA sends out employer and employee "no match" letters, about 130,000 of the former and around nine million of the latter.

Here the employer has submitted W-2 earnings data on employees and the SSNs do not match the SSA's Master Earnings File. (I believe that the employer has to have ten percent or more mismatches before the employer receives a "no match" letter, that's why there are only about 130,000 mailed out.)

The employer "no match" letter warns the employer that taking any kind of action against the employee could result in legal consequences for the employer -- that part of the letter is repeated in Spanish, BTW.

The letter suggests using the SSNVS before submitting corrections for the W-2 data but warns that a negative response "makes no statement about your employee's immigration status."

Have your employees contact the SSA to correct their SSNs and submit a Form W-2c, advises the SSA's letter.

Here's a link to a letter posted by www.immigrationlinks.com/news/news1714.htm

www.immigrationlinks.com/news/Social%20Security%20No%20Match%20Letter.pdf

It's a PDF photcopy file of about one-and-a-half million bytes.

The SSA has no authority to do anything else and does not notify ICE if the SSNs can never be made to match SSA's Master Earnings File.

RE: "If a person doesn't have a SS# then, then they are required to get one before they can work."

Though the ITIN does not authorize work the IRS hands 'em out like Halloween candy so that taxes can be paid on taxable income. See quote at end of my reply.

A little searching reveals that the federal government has all the information it needs to identify all ILLEGAL immigrant workers. From the IRS ITINs to the SSA's Earnings Suspense File, the information has been there for years.

It's all there. The employers, the ILLEGAL employees.. everything. Names, addresses.. everything.

(Yes, there's still the "underground" economy problem which involves citizens and legal immigrants as well as ILLEGALS.)

This link has a long description of the situation provided by advocates for ILLEGAL aliens "rights." They fear that the government will actually do something with the information. Fat chance.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=2201

There are tons of supporters of ILLEGAL aliens in government also. To wit,

"As IRS Commissioner [Mark W.] Everson stated, 'any sharing of confidential taxpayer information, directly or indirectly, with immigration authorities … would deprive the Federal Government of tax revenue by discouraging illegal workers in the U.S. from participating in the tax system, when the Code requires them to pay tax on their U.S. earnings.'"

RE: "I wonder how many ITINs are used to 'file' taxes - not to actually pay into the system, but to collect the Earned Income Tax Credit."

A report by cis.org stated that the IRS does not allow it for ITINs, ""Receipt of an ITIN does not make you eligible to claim the earned income credit (EIC)."

http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back1202.html

So the ILLEGAL immigrants have to use one of them bogus/stolen SSNs which are overflowing the SSA's Earnings Suspense File with "no match" employer W-2 data, I guess.

But one thing that worries me about "guest workers" is if approved and the millions and millions of ILLEGAL immigrants have to "pay" their back taxes -- then they'll get their EIC checks!

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