Thread: Identity crisis

Identity crisis
Law bars officials from cross-checking Social Security numbers

Monday, September 8, 2008 3:12 AM
By Jill Riepenhoff and Stephanie Czekalinski



THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


Farmer Russell Garber, back left, works in the field with a crew of migrant workers he brings in legally from Brazil each year. "Two factors led to the need for foreign labor," he said. "Farming changed, and the farms got bigger."


Workers plant each of Garber's cabbage plants by hand.




The Cooks, both 72, rely on migrant workers to plant and pick fruits and vegetables.


Migrant workers Alicia and Francisco Quintero work on an irrigation pipe on the western Ohio farm of Lowell and Ruth Cook.

Working illegally
Immigrants without visas made up a large share of the national work force in several occupations in 2006 :

Farming: 24 percent

Housekeeping: 17 percent

Construction: 14 percent

Food preparation: 12 percent

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

By the numbers
4
Work-site raids in Ohio by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2002

55
Percentage of immigrants living here illegally who pay federal income taxes

2.6
Percentage of Ohio's work force that is Latino

12,000
Migrant workers nationally who belong to a Toledo-based farm workers union

9,000
Farm union members working here without valid visas

Sources: ICE, Congressional Budget Office, Policy Matters Ohio, Farm Labor Organizing Committee

Buddy Birdwell has a wife and two kids -- and more lives than a cat.

When he's not a resident of northeastern Oregon who refurbishes furniture and belongs to the National Rifle Association, he is:

Adrian, a Columbus fast-food worker with a history of domestic violence.

Ernesto, a 33-year-old Dublin man caught driving without a license two years ago.

Maria Theresa, who bought a $220,000 house in Phoenix in 2006.

Carlos in Phoenix; Hector in Tampa; Marcos in suburban Los Angeles; Meliton in western Michigan; Miguel in Sedona, Ariz.; and Sandra in Glendale, Ariz.

The common link?

Birdwell's Social Security number, issued in 1980.

A database of public records collected and maintained by the company Nexis shows that nine other people have used Birdwell's Social Security number. The Dispatch discovered the overlap while researching Adrian's background through the subscription service.

"It's scary," said Birdwell, 41, after T he Dispatch alerted him to the situation. "I have no idea where they could have gotten a hold of my number."

While it's possible there could be typos in the public documents involved, it's likely that many or all of the seven men and two women using his number are living in the country illegally.

How they ended up with his number is a mystery. He doesn't know anyone in Ohio, Michigan, Florida or Arizona, he said.

Every year, the Social Security Administration collects millions of dollars from workers whose names and nine-digit numbers don't match, then holds the unclaimed money in a reserve account that now contains billions of dollars.

For U.S. citizens and foreigners legally admitted to the country, a Social Security number allows the government to track their earnings and entitles them to retirement, disability and death benefits.

For immigrants living here without permission, an illegally obtained or made-up number may clear the way to a job. Since 1986, it has been illegal to hire a worker without a Social Security number or a valid visa.

Illegal immigrants buy Social Security numbers from shady brokers, borrow them with permission from people they know, steal them, invent them and share them. Some use numbers belonging to their U.S.-born children.

Using another person's Social Security number is identity theft, even if it's used solely to gain employment.

Yet federal privacy laws prevent the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service from cross-checking their vast electronic databases to identify illegal workers.

They can't tell one another about mismatches, and they can't alert citizens if their Social Security numbers land in the hands of others. Citizens basically have no way to find out if their number has been compromised.

Birdwell has been down this road once before. Five years ago, he said, he received a call from a hospital in Seattle.

"Some lady had been trying to use it to get health care," he said. "I found out that it may have been a Latino lady."

He pulled his credit report -- it was clean -- then called the police. They told him there was nothing they could do.

Birdwell is frustrated by the federal government's inability to secure Social Security numbers and track down abusers.

"They've tied everything into people's Social Security numbers," he said. "If people can steal them, it's worse than breaking into your house and stealing your stuff. That can be fixed and replaced, but your number can't. You can't go get a new one."

Longtime gridlock
Congressional action could correct the problem, allowing the agencies to find those who use Social Security numbers fraudulently by comparing wage-earning reports, tax returns and visa information.

It's been bandied about and studied for years but never resolved.

There are potential consequences to crackdowns, James B. Lockhart III told a congressional committee in 2004. He is a former deputy director of the Social Security Administration.

"There definitely is the issue of the potential of driving people further underground. Instead of having these payroll taxes being paid, they would just stop paying them," Lockhart said.

Former U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., however, said that doing nothing could create other problems.

"Effective coordination across federal agencies is critical to protecting law-abiding individuals and our nation from identity thieves, or even terrorists," said the Florida Republican, who has since lost his seat.

Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, and the inspector general both have recommended to lawmakers that they make changes so that federal agencies can work together to track down workers with phony documents.

No one knows how many of the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally are using fraudulent Social Security numbers.

"It's a problem," said U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi, a Columbus Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, which has studied the issue. "That's why there have been a slew of bills introduced."

But no immigration bills have moved in the U.S. House of Representatives this year, not even those with bipartisan support.

"We're on orders (from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) to wait until the election's over," he said. "But it's irresponsible not to deal with it."

In the meantime, the pot of money created by mismatched Social Security numbers continues to grow.

Between 1937 and 2004, the Social Security Administration sent about $586 billion into a special fund for tax filers whose names and numbers don't match. When names and numbers match, the money is credited to the person's Social Security account.

By law, the agency must hold the money in case a match is made, but interest earned on the account goes into the general budget.

Some of the mismatches happen because of a name change or a typographical error. Others happen because people are working illegally.

About a fifth of the money in the fund was collected in 2003 and 2004 alone -- a sign that immigrants are illegally using Social Security numbers to gain employment, the inspector general's office reported to Congress in June 2007.

There's so much money in the fund now that it could pay for the Iraq war to date, but the money cannot be sent to the general budget.

The IRS has authority to fine employers who hire workers with invalid Social Security numbers but never has, the GAO found.

The federal agency charged with enforcing immigration laws also recognizes that employment is a huge magnet that pulls Latinos across the border, so it has ramped up against illegal workers and the companies that hire them.

Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement collected more than $30 million in fines nationally from companies that knowingly hired illegal immigrants -- up from $6,500 two years earlier.

But enforcement in Ohio remains rare. Since 2003, authorities have conducted only four work-site raids in Ohio, and none in central Ohio.

Businesses worry about the impact of stepped-up enforcement on their bottom line and on Ohio's sagging economy.

"Can the construction industry deal with 14 percent fewer workers? Can the farming industry lose 24 percent of its work force?" said Anthonio Fiore of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

A law pending in the Ohio legislature could force the answer to those questions by requiring government employers and subcontractors to verify through Social Security and Homeland Security that their employees are legally entitled to work.

It's a controversial verification system that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the state of Illinois refuse to endorse or use because it's not foolproof.

So Birdwell still is stuck untangling a mess that he didn't create and can't prevent.

Farmhands' documents
Government studies have shown that mismatched Social Security numbers are especially abundant among farmhands.

The inspector general examined a sample of Social Security records from agricultural workers in 1999 and 2000 and found that 48 percent had numbers and names that didn't match.

Illegal immigrants were the likely cause.

Farmers say they aren't document experts, nor are they required to be. If someone shows them seemingly legitimate papers, who are they to determine whether they're fraudulent?

They break federal law only if they knowingly hire an illegal worker.

Lowell and Ruth Cook, both 72, diligently check the IDs of the two migrant workers they hire to help with the strawberries, pumpkins and ornamental gourds on their 200-acre farm in Bradford, 30 miles northwest of Dayton.

"You have to trust that they're showing us legal documents," Mrs. Cook said.

President Bush has advocated an increase in the number of guest-worker visas so that farmers can hire the help they need without breaking the law.

Currently, about 66,000 foreigners receive visas for seasonal jobs.

Darke County farmer Russell Garber has used the program to bring migrant workers to his farm in western Ohio since the mid-1990s.

The visa program costs Garber about $100 per visa, $130 per interview at the U.S consulate in Brazil, and a few hundred for inspections of his workers' living quarters on his Ohio farm by the state health and environmental agencies. He also pays the workers' airfares, the upkeep and utilities on their living quarters here, and their work transportation.

He is required to pay his 16 workers about $9.90 an hour, nearly $3 more than he would have to pay U.S. citizens.

It takes him three months to muck through the bureaucracy of three federal and three state agencies. "They watch you like a hawk," Garber said. "If you went out and got illegals, no one would even know you were around."

Garber agrees that program reforms are needed, because farmers need workers.

"The last time anybody come out here from the employment office to work, they worked four hours and left," Garber said. "You can't be in the produce business and have people come and go as they please."

Unreliable safeguard
The federal government backed off a plan to require employers to verify the legal status of workers through a system that detects names and Social Security numbers that don't match, and checks for visa status.

After pressure from business lobbyists in Washington, D.C., including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the verification program became voluntary for employers in 1996. Today, only a small fraction of the country's 5.9 million employers use it.

An Ohio lawmaker is pushing a bill that would make it mandatory for anyone working for a governmental entity to use the program, called E-verify. That would include subcontractors hired to wash windows, mow lawns or test computer systems at schools, county courthouses and state office buildings.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce opposes such a move, saying the verification system has problems.

Congress' investigative arm, the GAO, tested the program last year and found about 8 percent of the names entered don't match their assigned Social Security number.

"That's millions of people," said Fiore, director of labor and human resources policy for the Ohio Chamber.

The reasons for the mismatch can be as simple as a failure to report a name change after a marriage or divorce.

"Resolving these nonconfirmations can take several days, or even weeks," the GAO report concluded.

Employers are required to hold jobs open for eight days when a mismatch happens, to give workers time to resolve the issue at their local Social Security office.

"The system gives you 'no match' without explanation, and that's a problem," Fiore said. "Maybe it's just a misspelling, or the number is one digit off."

But the burden of proof rests with the worker. Employers, worried about crackdowns that could cost them thousands of dollars in fines if they knowingly hire illegal workers, potentially could fire someone with a number that's mismatched for innocent reasons.

Birdwell, the Oregon man whose Social Security number has been linked to workers in central Ohio and across the country, has a different opinion.

He wants changes so that he doesn't have to share his number.

jriepenhoff@dispatch.com

sczekalinski@dispatch.com

Each installment of American Divide | The Immigration Crackdown can be found at www.dispatch.com and in Spanish at www.dispatchespanol.com, and will be published in Spanish during the next four weeks in the free weekly newspaper Fronteras de la Noticia.

"The last time anybody come out here from the employment office to work, they worked four hours and left. You can't be in the produce business and have people come and go as they please."

Russell Garber
Darke County farmer
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/lo ... ml?sid=101

Oh my! This is awful.

"They've tied everything into people's Social Security numbers," he said. "If people can steal them, it's worse than breaking into your house and stealing your stuff. That can be fixed and replaced, but your number can't. You can't go get a new one."

People can purposly or by accident destroy your life and I find it strange they can do something if they use your credit card, or write a check, or use your license......but no-one can say word if it's your SS#. I have the life lock but thank heavens they send the SS report of earnings so hopefully that lets be see if someone else is using it to work with. I say hopefully........because it seems the actual owner never knows anything till it's trouble and then there's no problem finding you to fix it.....especially if money is involved.

I just do not believe it is that hard to come up with a program that can truly verify whether a worker is entitled to work in the US. It will take a willingness on the part of the government to do that. At present, it seems they are more concerned about keeping their lobbyists happy than about
doing what is right for this country.

I noticed he said these people paid the foreign workers about $3 more than they paid citizens. Perhaps if over the years, they had offered citizens better wages, they would continue to have citizens available for work.

Just my thinking, but it is possible these same employers began hiring illegals when they first began coming and cut out any local workers. I saw that happen. As a result, soon the citizens simply quit applying for the jobs because they knew they would not be hired.

Why wouldn't it be better for the federal government to have a big media public information campaign to let citizens know they need to get their records in order. If someone has married or otherwise has a name change, they could go to the SS office and get that done.

Also, sometimes there is a typo on the SS# and people might not check. Once when we were 'full timers' in the motorhome, I worked at a college bookstore for a few weeks as a temp. When I got my check from the agency, they had one number wrong on my SS#.

I'm always skeptical about the government numbers concernng illegals.
They say they don't know how many are here.
They say they don't know where they are.
They say they can't determine who is or isn't illegal.

Yet,
They can tell us how much they have paid in federal taxes - and in the case of some propaganda that came from a Texas organization, they seem to know how much illegals spend on the Texas lottery!!