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Buying identities lets illegal workers escape detection

Improper use of others' papers on rise as fakes become easier to spot


11:44 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 23, 2006

By DIANNE SOLÍS / The Dallas Morning News

Five times a week, a Mexican-born illegal immigrant switches to a false identity and heads for a job slicing cherry tomatoes and artfully arranging arugula for Dallas lunch crowds.

His boss calls him José, the name on his Social Security card. But unlike the cards used by many illegal immigrants, his belongs to a real person.

"My documents are originales," says the man, emphasizing originales. He bought the Social Security card and birth certificate of a U.S. citizen for $600.

The fraudulent use of authentic Social Security numbers – whether rented, sold or stolen – may be climbing as the government pressures employers to more carefully check worker documents, immigration attorneys say.

The practice is adding to the already large problem of fake document use.

Mismatches over names and Social Security numbers have ballooned at the Social Security Administration, notably from 1990-2003, when illegal immigration swelled.

Social Security earnings reported and taxes paid under mismatched numbers have risen as well.

With debate over illegal immigration now at fever pitch, many policymakers are focused on the fake document industry.

The industry flourished after 1986, when Congress last overhauled the nation's immigration laws.

Employers, for the first time, were held liable for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. They were required to do a "good faith" review of work documents. But they weren't expected to be document experts.

Changing strategies
The Department of Homeland Security is now pushing employers to volunteer for a program to check Social Security numbers with a government database. Its hammer: Enforcement strategy is shifting from civil fines to criminal prosecution for harboring illegal immigrants.

That makes real documents even more valuable, the attorneys note.

"The law of unintended consequences may put a premium on identity theft," says Bonnie Gibson of Littler Mendelson Global, the nation's largest employment and labor law firm.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that demand is high for authentic documents.

The restaurant worker known as José says he bought real documents thinking they would shield him from detection better than phony papers.

Like many workers in the U.S. illegally, he was hesitant about discussing the details of his identities and asked for anonymity.

He did say that he bought his documents from another Hispanic in South Texas. And he considers the $600 price tag a bargain. He knows a worker who shells out $50 every paycheck to rent an authentic Social Security card.

Pinpointing how many illegal workers may be using the identities of U.S. citizens or legal residents is difficult because government databases are designed to catch fraudulent Social Security numbers – not authentic numbers used fraudulently.

But Social Security earnings for numbers that didn't match names in the database – which the government records in an "earnings suspension file" – were nearly $520 billion as of 2003, the last year for which government data are available. Three-fourths of that amount came in during 1990-2003.

Meanwhile, Social Security taxes paid under these mismatches have increased: In 2001 alone, some $7 billion in taxes was paid on nearly $58 billion in earnings, according to the agency's Dallas office.

"If you look at the year-by-year profile in the earnings suspense file, it does seem to coincide rather strongly with growth in undocumented immigration," says Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

The Social Security issue runs parallel with policy debates about illegal immigration, says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, co-director of immigration studies at New York University.

"The Social Security surplus is an issue that is not going away, and it is an issue that keeps growing because illegal immigration has become the elephant in the room," Mr. Suárez-Orozco says.

Using Social Security Administration data, Mr. Suárez-Orozco figures that there's about $1 billion in surplus Social Security taxes per million workers in the U.S. illegally.

About 7.2 million illegal immigrants are now in the U.S., or 5 percent of the labor force, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released this year. Texas is home to the second-largest concentration after California.

"One claim is that much of the funds comes from undocumented workers using some sort of fraudulent system," Mr. Suárez-Orozco says. "They don't claim the money because they are afraid of being caught by authorities."

A portion of the money from mismatched Social Security numbers comes from name changes due to divorces, foreign surname reversals and entry mistakes, says Social Security Administration spokeswoman Dorothy J. Clark.

Ms. Clark declined to speculate on how much of it comes from unauthorized workers in the U.S. "All Social Security receives is a W-2 form, and there is no one's status on the W-2 form," she says.

An April 2005 report by the Social Security Administration's inspector general was more direct. It said that nearly half of earnings in suspension came from the agricultural industry, 13 percent from the service industry and 11 percent from the restaurant industry.

All three are large employers of illegal immigrants.

One unidentified restaurant employer submitted more than 4,100 duplicate Social Security numbers for tax year 2001, and an employer in the service industry submitted over 2,100 for the same year, according to the report.

"One employer told us his restaurants and many others would be forced to close if they do not hire unauthorized noncitizens," the report reads.

ID buyers at risk too
Multiple risks come with the fraudulent use of a Social Security card – for the illegal immigrant as well as the person whose identity was stolen, sold or rented.

If the real owner of the card gets into legal trouble, authorities may track down the wrong person.

That happened in Arizona when an illegal immigrant found out she owed child support and her wages were being garnished.

The woman, who had a stellar, seven-year work record, admitted to her employer that her Social Security number and identity were not hers, says Ms. Gibson, the Littler attorney. The worker was fired.

In West Texas, another illegal immigrant from Mexico purchased a U.S. citizen's Social Security card and driver's license and was spun into a Kafkalike spiral.

He found out he inherited a less-than-perfect driving record, so he took a defensive driving course under his false name, says Dallas attorney Elise Healy. But he was caught and ordered into what immigration officials call "voluntary departure."

His U.S.-citizen wife and U.S.-born child were left in Texas. With time, his wife filed an immigrant visa petition to bring him back as a legal resident.

He had to disclose his alias as he reclaimed his real identity. Then he remarried under his real name and straightened out his son's birth certificate to assume true paternity.

"It just kept going around and around in circles of hell," Ms. Healy says.

On the other side of the border, in the bustling crossing point of Ciudad Juárez, a 42-year-old woman with legal U.S. residency rents her Social Security card to women and her 10-year-old son's number to men for $500 a year.

"Most of my clients are people I know, people who would rather use a legitimate card rather than a pirated one," says the woman, who asked for anonymity. "You do what you have to do to survive."

As for José, he says he knows the risks.

The real owner of the Social Security card "could be a drug addict, and the police could come after me," says the restaurant worker, as he unfolds hands scarred by tiny knife cuts and grease burns.

"Or, if he kills someone, the police could come after me. So if there are crimes, there are risks."

José pays Social Security taxes and says he has no plans to withdraw the money.

At another Dallas restaurant, a waiter named Tito paid $300 to use an authentic Social Security card for almost a year. But when the real owner asked for Tito's W-2 so he could file his own income tax, Tito stopped renting.

Tito purchased a fake Social Security number under his real name. He now files his income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which the Internal Revenue Service introduced 10 years ago for those who couldn't get a Social Security card.

"I've been here 10 years," explains the trim Mexican waiter, who attends a Dallas community college. "You can use a real person's number for 30 years, and if it isn't under your name, you'll never have proof you were here."

And why would he want proof?

Since President Bush first promised a guest worker program in 2001, Tito has been hopeful that legalization might be in his future. He would need a paper trail to prove he's been in the U.S.

Staff writer Alfredo Corchado contributed to this story from Ciudad Juárez.

E-mail dsolis@dallasnews.com