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Posted on 11/26/2025 6:25:33 AM PST by MtnClimber
As a matter of unlovely habit, apologists for illegal immigrants are wont to dismissively declare that, by entering the United States without permission and remaining here without the requisite legal dispensation, they have committed only a “civil infraction.” Insofar as this is true, it represents such a limited rejoinder to the objection as to be meaningless. Rare is the illegal immigrant who breaks into America and then does nothing else besides. Illegal immigrants work without permission. They dodge the country’s archipelago of employment law. They use government services that are designed to exclude them. They dishonestly submit forms that compel faithfulness in their authors. To respond to these abuses by insisting that their illegitimate presence in the United States is not a big deal is as silly as to respond to the abuses of a tax cheat by declaring that he is an American citizen: Narrowly correct, but beside the material point.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Eli Saslow provided us with a harrowing illustration of this problem. Saslow’s story features an American named Dan Kluver, who was repeatedly harassed by both federal and state officials because an illegal immigrant from Guatemala had stolen his identity. That illegal immigrant’s name was Romeo Pérez-Bravo, but he had adopted so many others over the years that, by the time he was discovered, they had “started to blur together.” As Dan Kluver, Pérez-Bravo had incurred debts, earned wages, racked up traffic violations, and even killed a guy — all of which, naturally, were traced to his victim rather than himself. That, in every part of this country, is a serious crime whether one is a citizen, an illegal immigrant, or anything else in between. If I had done it, I, too, would have been charged.
But, of course, I have not done what Romeo Pérez-Bravo did, because I am not an illegal immigrant. Certainly, there are some exceptions to the rule, but, as a general matter, it is safe to assume that very few legal residents will choose either to engage in identity fraud or to bypass the social contract completely, whereas, because they effectively have to, almost every illegal immigrant is driven to take one of those paths. For various reasons — including the majority’s preference for a set of labor laws, public services, and welfare-and-retirement programs that are inconsistent with unfiltered immigration — Americans want their national government to possess and enforce an immigration policy. When it does not, they profoundly dislike the consequences. This, and not some pedantic commitment to policing “civil infractions,” is why it is important that our elected officials keep our borders supervised. For better or for worse, contemporary life in the United States revolves around Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, credit scores, and other tracking systems that, if they are to work, must be closely overseen. That a given person might not like that setup is neither here nor there; if, absent abolition or reform, it is allowed to atrophy, the results will be catastrophic.
How catastrophic? As the New York Times notes, “as many as one million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers” — numbers that “are skimmed from data breaches, sold in black markets online for as little as $150 or handed out in border towns by human smugglers.” This, per the paper’s report, is what happened to just one of them:
Some years the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he’d contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived — this one for $22,000.
As one might expect, this took a toll on his personal life:
They spent the next decade living with the consequences — annual tax audits, budgets that never added up, whispered arguments after the kids went to bed. Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the I.R.S. $150 each month, which he’d done more than 35 times. “I can’t keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere,” he told Kristy. “I need to think about something else.”
If I may put it poetically, this is a full-frontal approach to Dan Kluver’s American Dream. In recent years, that phrase has been primarily used to describe the aspirations of immigrants such as myself, but, properly understood, it ought to apply no less rigorously to those who were born here. Eventually, Dan Kluver decided to “think about something else” — but that was not a victory, it was a resignation, an abdication, a surrender. Because of what Romeo Pérez-Bravo did, Dan Kluver was obliged to conclude that the promises of this country were no longer available to him. And who could blame him? It is stressful enough to have the IRS harassing you, but to have your tax returns rejected and your pay packets garnished and your savings demanded ad nauseam — on the basis of money you never earned or got to enjoy! — is intolerable. In such a situation, one cannot plan, or save, or make much sense of the world.
The Times’ headline is “Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price.” This is preposterous. If the attached story were about two taxpayers who, by dint of an innocent mistake at the Treasury, had been allocated the same Social Security number, that description might make sense. But it was not. It was about a man who broke the rules of entry, who broke the rules of the society in which he was trespassing, and who tried to get away with both crimes by riding on the back of an innocent man. That man, Romeo Pérez-Bravo, belongs in prison. His scapegoat, Dan Kluver, deserves an apology, restitution, and a vow from his representatives that they will do better in the future.
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I bet this is much more common than we believe.
Call Congress
US Capitol switchboard (202) 224-3121.
Call the White House
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD Comments: 202-456-6213
Or send a letter to the White House
Couldn’t believe this NYT headline. They should be ashamed
I read this article the other day. It boiled my blood. Absolutely made me angry, especially the part about the church, the pastor, the parishioners, who all stood up for the illegal criminal.
They should all be forced to suffer the same way the guy suffered who had his identity stolen. All of them.
Unbelievably shameful that people would support this person.
America was great until the democrat party came along.
Had a friend who’s kid lost his scholarship because some illegal had his SSN already enrolled.
The democrat encouraged Identity Theft by Illegal Aliens
p
A lesser version happened to me years ago.
“”Couldn’t believe this NYT headline.””
????
The IRS took three years to finally give me an answer: "no."
The data breaches at credit report firms caused me to lock down my reports at all four (!) credit reporting firms. (The Big Three plus one minor player.) This blocked all attempts at credit fraud, so far. I check my credit reports regularly, to catch any gremlins.
Don't want to make it easy for ne'er-do-wells.
I had a private investigator see if there was any negative, false info on me during a lawsuit.
He found five people with Spanish names working with my SSN.
Even is not required to do so.
I am working a dozen identity theft cases (most elderly). Three more came in last week, all elderly.
You can not believe what a PITA it is to get the IRS to listen (at least under the Biden administration).
These are uploaded en masse, maybe from overseas and info stolen from the Dark Web.
A total time waster for which we get no credit.
The Times’ headline is “Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price.”
It is a lie.
Trying to call gov’t agencies & expect help is a waste of time. He should’ve called his senator & congressman for help.
Homeland Security and the IRS can STOP this in a minute. After my wife got her green card and brand new social security number, I filed my Taxes with her on it and was almost immediately contacted by the IRS asking for proof the number was hers. I sent them the paperwork showing it was a brand new nu,mber and Homeland Security did too. The IRS ORDERED all of the Credit Agencies to DELETE the File and establish a new on with my wifes info.
They can do this if they want to
This story is an outrage. Beyond the identity theft that was allowed to happen (and would never have happened if we had reasonable immigration enforcement), Dan Kluver opted to pay the IRS for taxes that were not applicable to him? Was there no tax lawyer or accounting agency that could have figured this out for him?
May I ask what minor credit agency are you referring to?
Good ole Trans Union:
Got a letter from them a few months ago:
“We are writing to make you aware of a cyber incident involving unauthorized access to some of your personal data that was stored on a third-party application, Importantly, no credit information was accessed.”
“We regret any concern caused by this incident and take seriously the responsibility to help secure consumer information.”
The kicker - “The info was limited to specific data elements and did not include credit reports or core credit information. In your case, the information involved included your SSN and DOB.”
So, appartently, SSN and DOB are NOT considered core credit information?
makes me want to “obtain” the SSN of this NYT writer and start handing it out to any one “in need”
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