by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: March 12, 2009

In the on-going sick joke that the struggle over illegal immigration has become, many people cannot figure out why most government agencies aren't concerned about the cost to citizens caused by identity theft. Most people believe government either doesn't see the enormous cost to citizens when their identity is stolen or that they are actually working to prevent it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Government benefits on several levels from the huge amount of ID theft going on today.

In terms of this argument, the focus is on ID theft as related to illegal immigration only: other criminal ID theft is a much smaller problem and has little impact on government in most cases. Likewise, government cant profit from it in any way. For the benefits to government at the Federal and State levels are tax dollars collected but not returned. And this is much, much larger than most people can ever imagine.

Unlike what most people imagine, most illegal workers aren't working "under-the-table", so to speak. They are on the payroll, have a regular paycheck and regular deductions taken out for payroll, FICA and Medicare Taxes. Government is astute enough to realize that a company needs a workforce of at least a certain number of people to generate the amount of profit showing on the Annual Report and the tax returns. They also require that the I-9 forms be completed for every worker and that a social security number be provided. This makes every employee appear to be legal' on paper, allows the employer to deny they knew they were hiring illegal workers and the various levels of government to collect payroll deductions on all of them. This also provides "cover" for some employees to hire a number of illegal workers "off the books", on whom NO taxes are paid.

This is the cause of the vast majority of identity theft: organized rings of enablers of illegal alien workers steal and then sell social security numbers willy-nilly from a variety of sources. The massive thefts of entire databases in recent years are likely a source of many of these social security numbers. Many of these illegals see nothing wrong with buying a social security number-it's similar to the way business is traditionally done in their home countries where graft is a way of life. One of my favorite stories was the guy who insisted indignantly when charged with identity theft that, yes, it WAS his social security number. After all, he paid $150 for it!

Somewhere, in nearly every city and state, some government

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>