Illegal Alien Identity Theft

By Jonathon Moseley

Remarks at the November 11, 2009 Freedom Leadership Conference, by Jonathon Moseley, Executive Director, American Border Control (formerly U.S. Seaport Commission), a project of United States Public Policy Council (USPPC).  Moseley is a practicing attorney serving clients in Northern Virginia and Richmond, VA.  He is a past Executive Director of the Legal Affairs Council and is serving his second term as a member of the USPPC Board of Directors, which has been the main organizer of this Freedom Leadership Conference for the past ten years.

Do you want to know if an illegal alien is using your social security number, and your identity, to work illegally in the United States?

This week American Border Control is launching an on-line petition campaign to seek to stop illegal aliens from committing identity theft against elderly social security recipients and American workers.

What apologists for illegal immigration ignore is that most illegal aliens also commit the crime of identity theft in order to work and live illegally in the United States.  The problem is not limited to entering the country illegally, nor even stealing jobs from Americans.

Your social security account, and your credit and good name, is at risk if someone else is using your social security number to work here illegally in the United States.

Now let me be clear:  As an attorney, I have prepared legal papers for immigrants to LEGALLY enter the United States and I have arranged for immigrants to enter and work legally in the USA.   I also have friends from many other countries who have entered the USA the right way.   But I am also certain that illegal aliens do steal jobs from American workers.  It was just reported this year that illegal aliens caught crossing the border are down 23% because of the bad economy in the USA.  They are coming here for jobs…. our jobs.

But to circumvent the law, most illegal aliens have to steal someone’s identity.

To add a little pop culture, this could be called the Beldar Conehead problem from the movie Coneheads.  Beldar Conehead, from outer space, has no social security number to work legally in the US.   So Dan Akyrod’s character sells Beldar the identity of  Donald R. DeCicco.  Trouble is, Dan Akyrod keeps selling the same stolen identity to hundreds of other illegal aliens at the same time.  So hundreds of illegal aliens are all using some unhappy person’s social security number.  And in the movie, things go on from there.

When an employee is paid, they report their social security number on an IRS W-4 form and the employer reports their wages to the Internal Revenue Service on a W-2 Form.

The Social Security Administration acts as the agent of the IRS in processing these W-2 forms, to keep a record of earnings for paying social security.

So, what happens when the name on the W-2 does not match name for the social security number?   The social security records show Janice Smith, while the W-2 reports that  Juan Gonzalez is working under that social security number.

What happens when dozens or hundreds of people – all different names – are all using the same social security number?

Nothing.  Or very little.  Out of political correctness, and impulses to encourage or excuse illegal immigration, the Social Security Administration does not refer these abuses for prosecution.

In other words, we know right now exactly where most illegal immigrants are working and where they live.  When the W-2’s come into the Social Security Administration, SSA sees the mismatch, and could tell Homeland Security exactly who is here illegally.

We don’t even need to round them up.  All Homeland Security needs to do is order the employer to stop hiring illegal aliens, because that is against the law.  With no jobs, illegal aliens would go home to their own country.

Remember:  These people have a country to go home to.  They do have a place where they belong.  There are no wars in Mexico, no natural disasters, no famines, no droughts.  They have come here purely out of GREED.

The Inspector General of the Social Security Administration explains that when a social security number does not match the name on the social security records, or there is no valid social security number at all, these mismatches are placed in the EARNINGS SUSPENSE FILE.

The Inspector General reports that the Earnings Suspense File contains over 227 million Wage and Tax Statements (W-2) and $327 billion in wages accrued between Tax Years (TY) 1937 and 1999.

Approximately 96 percent of the Earnings Suspense File mismatches relate to TYs 1970 through 1999

During TY 1999 alone, the ESF grew by 8.3 million W-2s and $39.4 billion in wages. Approximately 96 percent of ESF wages related to TYs 1970 through 1999.

What is SUPPOSED to happen is that SSA sends letters to the employers advising them of the mismatch.

The employer is supposed to call the worker in and find out what is going on, and check if there is a problem that can be corrected or if there is something more serious going on.

But this process is not being seriously followed and there is no teeth.

During the Bush Administration, there was an attempt to make this process actually work.  But it ran into great opposition and the reforms ground to a halt.

We at American Border Control are launching a petition campaign calling on the Congress, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the prosecutors at the Department of Justice to get serious and make this process work.

When the Social Security Administration sees that social security numbers do not match, they must be REQUIRED by law to NOTIFY the SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER HOLDER.  If someone is using your social security number without your knowledge, don’t you want to know about it?

And one of the fastest ways to find out if there is an honest mistake or something more sinister is to let the person who validly holds the social security number know that there has been a mismatch on their social security account.

And when employers receive mismatch letters, they cannot just dump them in a file.  REMEMBER:  THESE ARE THE SAME EMPLOYERS WHO ARE HIRING THE ILLEGAL ALIENS WITH A WINK AND A NOD.   Can we trust them to police the law?

There must be strong penalties for employers who do not resolve such questions within a reasonable time period.

And the Department of Justice should prosecute employers who continue to employ workers despite warning signs about their identity.

So we are calling on all concerned Americans to sign our petition and to help us correct this serious problem.

And on a similar note, we are also in a very dangerous time when China holds $2.1 trillion in US currency and  just under $800 billion in US Treasury bills.  America is living off of money loaned from China.  So, China has enormous leverage over the United States government.

Last week, India dumped $6.7 billion of US dollars by buying 200 tons of gold.   China could do the same, selling its dollars by buying gold instead.

China could destroy our social security system at any time, because the social security trust fund has little or no cash in it.  Our government has invested $2.4 trillion of our social security money in US treasury bills.

If China stops lending us money, or worse if China decided to sell its $800 billion on the open market, America’s finances would collapse.

There would be no money to print social security checks, government payroll checks, or anything else.  No real money.  No borrowed money.  Nothing.

The Social Security Administration would not be able to sell its $2.4 trillion in Treasury bills if China was also dumping $800 billion of T-bills, and China also stopped lending us any more money.

The social security trust fund depends upon China.  China can decide whether to crash the social security system at any time by collapsing the market for US Treasury bills.

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