Thread: Great Letter to Tom Tancredo

Another great American that is trying to help stop the invasion of Illegal Immigrants.

Illegals: Cash Crop for IRS, Mystery to ICE

The Honorable Tom Tancredo
United States House of Representatives
1130 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-0606

Dear Congressman Tancredo,

I am writing in hope that you make known widely a fact about immigration that is virtually unknown to the general public: About almost all foreigners who are living and working illegally in this country, our government knows their name, address, workplace, and income, as well as the names of their dependents!

How? Employers withhold income tax and FICA contributions from these workers’ wages and send the amounts withheld to the IRS (and to the Franchise Tax Board, in California; the IRS and most, if not all, state tax agencies share virtually all information about taxpayers.) In turn, almost all of these workers dutifully file tax returns annually. As a result, our government, between what employers report about their workers and what workers report about themselves, has all the information it needs to arrest and deport the workers and to prosecute their employers.

How do I know all this? I was a tax technician with the Franchise Tax Board from 1995 to 1999. I happen to be fluent in Spanish, so I was assigned to take calls from and assist non-English-speaking "taxpayers" who, usually after receiving a wage garnishment for payment of unpaid taxes, were seeking an installment agreement or modification of the wage garnishment. Many had not even filed tax returns. All were obviously foreigners, with scant knowledge of U.S. tax law.

But how, you may ask, did I know such workers were living and working illegally in this country? For one thing, I would ask them, and they would generally admit the truth. But more powerfully, the routine was to first ask a caller for his social security number. I would type the number into my computer and up would come many, many names, sometimes hundreds, almost all of them Spanish, the natural product of issuing the same, usually legitimate, social security number to a horde of people via forged identity documents. The Franchise Tax Board would, upon receipt of tax withheld by the employer, automatically issue a dummy tax identification number to the worker who was using someone else’s social security number. As a tax technician, it was often difficult, but always possible, to match a tax record to the caller.

I believe that Americans would be outraged to know that our government already has in its hands all the information it needs to enforce our immigration laws. No doubt the IRS and its sister state tax agencies would claim that using tax information to enforce immigration laws (by passing taxpayer identification information to the Department of Homeland Security, for example) is illegal. If that is so, then the law must be changed, something that falls in your department.

Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service, with its thousands of employees, continues to sit on the very information that would facilitate the enforcement of our immigration laws, while the rest of our government says it doesn’t know who the workers are, where they are, where they work, how much they earn, etc. Quite false. Our government knows all that, but the various departments fail, for some reason, to share information. No one shares information, least of all the IRS and Social Security Administration, which piously claim that immigration enforcement isn’t their job, while the dollars continue to flow in under phony social security numbers. Everyone makes money, while immigration law is ignored. Tax law counts. Immigration law doesn’t.

I would be happy to tell my story to anyone you might recommend; if this story broke on a television program such as “Lou Dobbs Tonight” or "60 Minutes," the resulting public outrage would make your job of trying to keep our country safe much easier.

Some might respond that employers would simply resort to omitting to report and pay withholding tax to the IRS. I would respond that employers may feel safe ignoring immigration laws, but few have the nerve to take on the IRS by concealing information about illegally employed workers. Tax law has real teeth, even if immigration law doesn’t.

By the way, I am far from a crackpot. I have made my career in public service, with 11 years in Federal civil service with the Department of the Navy, the Department of the Air Force, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Transportation. For the past 10 years, I have worked for the State of California, first with the Franchise Tax Board, then with the Department of Transportation, my current employer. I have served in the Coast Guard Reserve for the past 17 years. I was mobilized for the past two and a half years as a chief warrant officer (finance and supply specialty) in expeditionary warfare units in the global war on terror, and discharged honorably from active duty in April 2005. I served, among other places, in the harbor defense unit at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I am proud of my service to this country and I wish to help keep her safe in peace as I did at war. I hold undergraduate degrees in classical languages and accounting. I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. I am a graduate (with an emphasis in taxation, of all things) of University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, where Justice Anthony Kennedy was a constitutional law professor. All in all, I know what I’m talking about.

I hope what I have divulged in this letter is useful to you. I would be happy to tell this story to others, if you believe that would be useful. If so, please let me know. My e-mail address (REDACTED)

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to you for your efforts to help our country control her borders. I follow your work with great interest. In my eyes, you’re a hero.

Warmest regards

Chief Warrant Officer Daniel (REDACTED)
U.S. Coast Guard Reserve

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