One facet of the immigration issue

By: JOHN STICKLER - Commentary

As the U.S. Senate debates the proposed immigration legislation, America wonders what can be done to correct the situation we are in.

Due to lax enforcement since the legal amnesty of 1986, we now find we have 10 million to 15 million residents who have infiltrated the country illegally. To offer them a path to citizenship, or even to legal residence, is patently unfair to all the patient foreign applicants who are following the rules.

There are many aspects to this issue. An impending population explosion is the one that terrifies me, but today I'd like to focus on another facet ---ñ the ID card requirement.

Recently on the John & Ken Show (KFI-AM 640) they interviewed a woman who had discovered that 81 individuals in some 21 states were using her Social Security number. Amazingly, she was able to track them down and speak to each one.

She zeroed in on a Mexican national in Texas who was the proprietor of a successful swap meet. She pressed her case against this man and he was subsequently investigated by Texas authorities. They questioned him, made copies of his documents and opened a file on him. All his papers made use of her Social Security number.

Because the woman expected a successful prosecution, she was stunned when the Texas legal system dropped the case. She has applied for a new Social Security number.

This May in Wildomar I met a woman in similar circumstances; let's call her Mary. She works for the state of California in the health care field. Beginning in the 1980s she became aware that someone was using her Social Security number. In 1999 it was getting so bad that she asked a friend in Sacramento to find out what was going on.

The friend had access to a database of California employees and ran a reverse check based on Mary's Social Security number. The printout was 12 pages long; 399 people were using her number! Needless to say, this has made her life very difficult: "You didn't declare bankruptcy in Fresno? Prove it." She has been promised a new Social Security number.

The punch line here is a factoid from The Nation magazine stating that federal computer programs can catch phony Social Security numbers if only one person has appropriated a legitimate number. They can't track multiple users.

Whether this is true or not doesn't even matter; our IRS/Social Security system is already swamped by a landslide of fake ID cards and fraudulent employment records. And Washington expects to solve this problem by issuing new "Z" visas?

Wait a minute! Long before we start handing out Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards ---- how easy will they be to copy? ---- we need to clean up the incredible mess we already have.

John Stickler lives in Murrieta.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06 ... 6_7_07.txt

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