Social Security Won’t Alert INS to Illegals

Social Security Won’t Alert INS to Illegals

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, Sept. 29, 2003

Last year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) discovered that almost a million people had sought to join the social security system, but were rejected because their numbers may have been obtained fraudulently.

In many cases, illegal aliens have used other people’s Social Security numbers to work in the U.S.

The SSA’s system, one might think, would be a great way for the government to ferret out illegal aliens and notify the INS to investigate. Many are under the impression that the controversial Patriot Act opened the flood gates of information-sharing among government agencies in the interest of national security.

The bad news, however, is that in the case of the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service little has changed in the two years since 9/11.

Although the FBI and CIA are now reputedly chatting away, there is a growing school of thought that the more mundane IRS and SSA need to get on the information-sharing superhighway as well.

During last year’s oversight hearings on the risks to homeland security from identity fraud and identity theft held by the House Immigration, Border Security, and Claims Subcommittee, these hard, cold facts were noted:

Terrorists operating under false identities pose an extremely serious threat to homeland security.

Some of the 9/11 hijackers falsely obtained social security numbers, which allowed them to open bank accounts and get credit cards here.

A May 2002 report by the Social Security Administration revealed that one in 12 foreigners receiving new social security cards used counterfeit documents or stolen identities to obtain them.

Preliminary figures showed that 100,000 social security cards were wrongly issued to non-citizens in 2000, alone.

Lax security of source documents by federal agencies and state agencies, which issue valid identity cards, social security cards, and drivers’ licenses, continues.

Only belatedly in September 2003 is the IRS reportedly seeking ways to pass on to sister agencies like the Immigration and Naturalization Service information compiled under its individual taxpayer identification number program, which requires foreigners with earned income in the United States and awaiting citizenship to comply with U.S. tax laws.

Foreign workers in the U.S. routinely use the identification numbers to obtain driver's licenses and open bank accounts -- sources of potentially valuable dope for internal domestic security agencies.

Still No Sharing on Illegals

IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson, fortuitously a former INS deputy commissioner and Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, wants to share such tax information with other agencies without having to go through rigorous disclosure procedures, not to mention the perquisite court order, says a recent report in the Boston Globe.

Everson even believes that post-Sept. 11 antiterrorism laws can be interpreted to give him the authority to make the changes without having to rewrite laws.

But Everson’s good intentions and 9/11 aside, it looks as if the more restrictive edicts of the IRS’s key section 6103 -- spawned in the wake of the Nixon administration’s abuses -- will die hard.

Loosening the strictures of section 6103 could discourage taxpayers from filing honest tax returns, says Sheldon Cohen, who served as IRS commissioner under President Johnson.

“[T]he one thing the Justice Department doesn't think about is that people file tax returns only if they know they won't be used for anything else,” Cohen told the Globe. “People fear the IRS more than local gendarmes. If the IRS becomes an adjunct to local gendarmes, what does that do to the tax code?"

Meanwhile, it’s not just the IRS that remains stymied in disclosing to and cooperating with other agencies.

Case on Point:

Since 1994, The SSA has been issuing so-call “no-match” letters to employers in cases where the employee information they have is at odds with that of the employer.

Presumably this would be an easy way to catch illegal aliens who used a fraudulent Social Security number to gain employment. When such numbers are used, the Social Security administration notifies the employer of a problem.

Incredibly, however, SSA does not notify other agencies, such as the INS. As much as these discrepancies would be of interest to sister agencies such as the INS, the SSA remains mum.

“We don’t report, we don’t make any statements” to immigration officials, SSA spokesman Mark Lassiter said.

The SSA issued 900,000 such letters to companies nationwide last year, a record for the agency.

After complaints from immigration groups, however, SSA is cutting to 130,000 the number of such warnings it will send and editing out the tough language that warned of fines against companies for providing incorrect numbers.

And, of course, continuing to share nothing with sister agencies such as the INS.

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