Posted on 07/21/2006 8:13:53 PM PDT by K-oneTexas
Illegal Dirty Little Secrets about Social Security By Herman Cain
There are two dirty little secrets behind the debate over the illegal alien issue that even the advocates of securing the borders first have failed to discuss. The first secret is that the estimated twelve to twenty million aliens living and working illegally in the United States have to commit identity theft to secure employment. The second secret is that without illegals' payroll tax contributions, filed under stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers, the Social Security system would collapse years earlier than estimated.
Hard to believe, here are the facts.
The birth of the connection between illegal aliens, identity theft and the Social Security system began in 1986. That year Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which required workers to show a Social Security card to obtain employment. IRCA also made it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers. The consequence of IRCA is that millions of stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers have been used in the past twenty years. IRCA did nothing to curb illegal aliens from crossing our borders to find work, or to end employers' demand for their labor.
A 2006 General Accountability Office study reports that the Social Security Administration maintains a database called the Earnings Suspense File (ESF) to track fraudulent use of Social Security numbers. When an employer files payroll taxes for an employee, and the employee's name and Social Security number do not match or the number does not exist in Social Security's records, the unmatched or fraudulent number is recorded in the ESF. Though estimates of illegal aliens present in the U.S. range from twelve to twenty million, as of November 2004 the ESF contained over 246 million records.
The GAO also reports that forty-three percent of employers that file payroll taxes on stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers represent just five industries. Further, 8,900 employers, .2 percent of all employers with reports in the ESF database, have submitted over thirty percent of the ESF's total records.
According to a 2005 report by MSNBC technology correspondent Bob Sullivan, the ESF represents $420 billion in payroll tax contributions. Illegal aliens who work under stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers will never receive Social Security benefits, so the hundreds of billions of dollars they contribute represent what Sullivan rightly calls "essentially free money to the system." Eduardo Porter reported in the New York Times that payroll taxes from illegal aliens represent approximately ten percent of the so-called Social Security surplus.
Enforcement of labor and immigration law is further hamstrung by a byzantine bureaucratic nightmare constructed by Congress in an effort ironically designed to protect privacy. Under current law, the SSA is barred from sharing information in the EFS with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because it contains taxpayer records. Congress has enabled massive invasion of our privacy by encouraging identity theft and not allowing DHS to effectively investigate employers and employees suspected of labor and immigration law infractions. Even though the EFS contains 246 million records of stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers, in 2004 DHS only initiated 5,400 investigations of employers or workers suspected of breaking labor or immigration laws.
Illegal aliens represent cheap labor for employers and billions of dollars to the government to temporarily prop up the failing Social Security system. Congrtess is not only doing nothing to restructure Social Security, but its wink-and-nod policy toward illegal aliens and their employers encourages massive identity theft and ruined financial standing for millions of Americans.
Common sense solutions exist, but the political will to enact them is missing. First, Congress must allow DHS access to the ESF files. The ESF files would literally provide DHS the roadmap to employers and workers guilty of breaking labor and immigration laws. It’s not just law enforcement, it’s a matter of national security.
Second, Congress must increase and enforce penalties on employers of illegal aliens. Most employers want to obey the law, but the laws have to be enforced.
Third, we must secure our borders. That does not mean sending a few thousand members of the National Guard to assist border patrol agents. We must also secure the most porous areas of the border with whatever means necessary, or legal American citizens will continue to fall prey to massive identity theft.
Illegal aliens present a challenge to national security, and a false sense of temporary security to our failing Social Security system. Failure to fix the problem just makes the problem worse.
That’s not a secret. It’s common sense.
Yeah, pretty soon we'll have a civil servant for every private worker. Hang onto your wallet.
Even though the EFS contains 246 million records of stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers...
Sorry, wasn't really a dig at you personally. Just the fact that there are more people working after 65 now more than ever before...because they cannot afford to quit/retire, and younger people suffer because of it.
bookmark
Yep.
Most people haven't taken the time to do the math, but just the education costs are ridiculous.
If an illegal alien has three kids that go to public school from K-12, the taxpayers have spent $500,000 -- half a million bucks -- putting those kids through school.
And because they are illegal, they'll never be able to hold a job that makes enough money to re-pay the State that much -- not in their lifetimes and not in their kids' lifetimes -- thru property taxes, State income taxes and State sales taxes.
Same with SS taxes. They might contribute some taxes here and there, but the jobs they'll be able to hold with the identity-theft or forged SS# schemes will not be high-paying jobs. That means the SS taxes paid will not be much.
And I'll bet because of labor laws and fear of being sued, you wouldn't tell that person's future employer that they'd been terminated for providing a false SS#, right ?
Most employers have taken the position that they won't do anything except confirm the dates of employment when somebody uses them as a reference. They won't tell the future prospective employer whether the person quit, was fired, or why they were fired.
That's undoubtedly why there are 246 million ESF records -- these illegals get caught, but they just go out and find another job using a new a different forged SS#.
Seems to ignore the fact that this largess only marginally offsets the other economic factors; free education, free health care, under reported income and payroll taxes, other local social services, uninsured motorists, just to name a few.
The lack of an actual verification against a database was a great flaw in the 1986 law which supposedly required proof of a valid SS card to obtain work.
I think one of the best steps that could be taken at the State level would be to change their Driver's Licenses and ID Cards to an RF ID card. Encrypted and unduplicatable, and checked against the database to verify it is active. Then change their own State employment laws to require that this form of ID be used before any person can be hired.
I'd actually like to see it used like a FasTrak pass is used for toll lanes on highways, too. Every underpass could check that it gets a valid signal bounced back from every car that passes. If no signal from an RF Driver's License, then the nearest Highway Patrol could pull the person over, and if no valid Driver's License, impound the vehicle. Sell vehicles to pay for the system. Get unlicensed drivers -- including illegals -- off our highways. In Southern California, this would probably save billions in highway expansion that would no longer be necessary.
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