http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 02003.html

Dec. 4, 2005, 10:27PM

ONE NATION, TWO WORLDS
Fake IDs critical and easy to get
By TONY FREEMANTLE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

To get the Social Security card he needed for his first job in America, all Francisco had to do was go to the flea market on Airline Drive and fork over $30 to a man who was selling them.

In another instance, a woman worked late into the night, painstakingly altering her U.S.-born child's card so she could use it as her own to search for a job.

Others name their newborn children after themselves so they can use the infant's card without having to worry about the name and number coming back as invalid in the rare case anyone checks.

In these and myriad other ways, undocumented immigrants by the thousands each year overcome the chief obstacle to beginning their lives in America.

It is virtually impossible to tell exactly how many of the estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States use invalid or fraudulently obtained Social Security cards to gain employment, obtain driver's licenses or get loans, but there are indicators that the practice is endemic.

•The Social Security Administration has what it calls an "earnings suspense file" where it deposits payroll tax withholdings from names and Social Security numbers that don't match its records. The file totals more than $380 billion since 1937, with as much as $190 billion added in the 1990s alone. Social Security officials suspect much of the recent growth can be attributed to undocumented immigrants using fictitious or fake Social Security numbers because of a 1986 law that made it illegal to hire someone without a number or another authorization to work. Nearly 50 percent of the deposits into the earnings suspense file came from the agriculture, service and restaurant industries.
•Last year, there were more than 50,000 calls made to the Social Security fraud hot line, with many reporting the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.
•In the United States, it is illegal to hire anyone who cannot provide proof that he or she is legally entitled to work. The most common proof is a Social Security card. Yet 96 percent of undocumented immigrant men are estimated to be in the work force.
•For more than a year, the Houston Chronicle has closely followed a diverse group of undocumented immigrants in Houston. Virtually all have at some point used phony Social Security cards and numbers.
"We do understand that there is a readily available source for these cards," said Wes Davis, a Social Security spokesman in the Dallas regional office. "It's pervasive and a big problem."

In many instances, undocumented immigrants are able to buy a document "package" on the street that contains a fake Social Security card, permanent residence card and a driver's license.

Of the three, many undocumented immigrants said the Social Security card is the most important. One immigrant said he would never carry a fake driver's license because if a police officer spotted it during a traffic stop, he would be deported. He just pays the fine for not having one.

Others said a fake permanent resident card, or "green" card, didn't do as much for them as the Social Security card in terms of getting by day to day.

Davis said Social Security's ability to crack down on the fraudulent use of cards is limited by resources and priorities. The agency prefers to target the bigger "paper mills" that churn out sheets of blank cards, rather than the person selling them in the flea market or on the street corner.

tony.freemantle@chron.com