Washington, D.C. (September 1, 2022) – Federal authorities estimate that more than one million people in the United States, many of them illegal aliens, are using Social Security numbers belonging to someone else. However, government agencies choose to look the other way, allowing Americans, including young children, to be victimized by identity thieves.
This week, Ben Weingarten joins
Parsing Immigration Policy to talk about a
report on ID theft he co-authored for RealClearInvestigations.com, where he is deputy editor. Weingarten discusses with Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and host of the podcast, various steps the federal government can take to address this widespread fraud.
The Earnings Suspense File is an accounting tally kept by the Social Security Administration of wages reported on W-2 forms, where the information does not match the SSA’s records. Weingarten said some of these mismatches are legitimate, such as in the case of a name change, but the tenfold increase in the total wages recorded in the file is in large part due to the explosion of the number of illegal aliens in the U.S., many of whom are working on the books with SSNs that are not their own.
Weingarten says, “Government agencies not only know that there is a substantial amount of identity fraud going on in the workplace, but they want to turn the other way on it. They believe they have an incentive to turn the other way on it.” Federal officials, including members of Congress, Weingarten says, argue that this identity theft is actually beneficial because illegal immigrants contribute to federal tax revenue. Meanwhile, they ignore the American citizens – typically Hispanics or children, or both – who are victims of this identity fraud by illegal aliens.
In his closing commentary, host Mark Krikorian calls attention to the increased number of illegal aliens dying at the border since President Biden entered the White House. The Biden administration’s lack of consistent enforcement, which Krikorian calls “open-ish borders”, has invited illegal immigration and enticed illegal entrants to take foolish, often deadly, risks.
