TERENCE P. JEFFREY

Nearly everyone professes to agree that the government should crack down on employers who hire illegal aliens. But it appears that the government needs, first, to crack down on itself. That’s the story told in a footnote of an audit report quietly released a year ago by the inspector general of a federal agency that seemingly has nothing to do with immigration.

It indicates that the Bush administration itself has employed aliens not authorized to work in the United States. Year after year, first the Justice Department and then the Department of Homeland Security were given information that would have allowed them to pinpoint exactly who these unauthorized alien workers were and which federal agencies employed them. Yet, by the end of the period covered by the audit report (which ran through tax year 2003), the problem remained unsolved. (The inspector general has not yet analyzed the relevant data for tax years after 2003.)

Which agencies employed these aliens? The government won’t say. Citing a provision in the tax code, the inspector general’s office says it is prohibited from publicly identifying them, and so, for now, they stay “in the shadows.â€