When he signed the Homeland Security funding bill last week, President Bush vowed to track down illegal aliens inside the United States and enforce the law against employers who hire them.

“If somebody’s here illegally, we’ve got to do everything we can to find them,� said Mr. Bush. “We’ve got to crack down on employers who flout our laws.�

Well, I have two pieces of information the president might find useful. The first is that I know where he can get excellent intelligence that could help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents simultaneously find a great many illegal aliens and crack down on employers flouting the law. The second is that if DHS uses this information, it may well end up busting a state government for hiring illegal aliens.

The information is now in the possession of the Social Security Administration (SSA), which believes it is legally prevented from sharing it with DHS other than in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Specifically, SSA has two lists. First, according to the SSA inspector general, SSA develops a list each year of all employers who submit 100 or more W-2 forms â€â€