Cracking down on phony Social Security numbers is a no brainer

Columnist Gordon Dillow writes that cracking down on phony social security numbers isn't that hard, just send letters of impropriety to the bosses.

By GORDON DILLOW / Register columnist

I'll give the Irvine-based Western Growers Association this much. Unlike the ACLU and labor unions and pro-illegal immigration groups that opposed the so-called "no-match letters" program, at least the growers association admits that there actually is an illegal immigration problem.

I'll get back to the WGA later. But first the background.

Every year the Social Security Administration (SSA) handles millions of employee earnings reports in which the employee's name doesn't match the Social Security number being used. In many cases there's an innocent explanation. Maybe some digits in the number were transposed, or maybe someone changed her name after getting married and forgot to notify the SSA.

But in recent decades the number of these "no-match" cases has skyrocketed, particularly among agriculture, restaurant and "services" employees. The reason for that is simple: Millions of illegal immigrants have been using fraudulent Social Security numbers to get work - which is a felony.

For years the SSA has been sending out "no-match letters" to employers to let them know if there's a problem with an employee's Social Security records. For a responsible employer this is no problem, and it's also good for any legal employee. Since his future Social Security benefits may depend on his reported earnings, if he's not getting full credit a legal employee will want to clear it up.

But for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, or don't care if they hire illegal immigrants, the SSA's no-match letters were simply fodder for the circular file. There was no penalty for failing to follow up on the no-match report.

So the Department of Homeland Security decided to make it a little tougher. The agency had planned to put a notice in the Social Security Administration's no-match letters advising employers that if they didn't take steps to have their no-match employees' records straightened out within 90 days, it could be used as evidence that they had knowingly hired illegal workers.

Sounds reasonable to me. After all, the warnings would only be sent to employers with 10 or more no-match employees on the payroll - which, astonishingly, is about 140,000 employers with almost 9 million employees.

And hey, if I were an employer I'd like to know if I had 10 or more guys working for me who might be committing felonies - and if they were, I'd have no problem being required to give them their walking papers.

Nevertheless, the ACLU and various labor and pro-illegal immigration groups took it to court, saying it would cause "irreparable harm" to millions of "innocent" workers and their employers.

And they won, at least for now. Last week a federal judge temporarily blocked the no-match warning letter program - a decision that was also praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.

Which brings us back to the Western Growers Association.

The association represents about 3,000 farmers in California and Arizona who collectively employ up to 200,000 workers. The association says it opposed the no-match warning letters on various practical grounds: not enough time allowed for verification, excessive burdens on employers and so on.

Of course, the real reason that farmers (and restaurant owners and hotel chains and so on) oppose any employer sanctions is because illegal workers are cheap, and if they don't have them - or have equally low-paid workers from some other source - the crops will rot in the ground or on the vine and they'll go broke.

But as I said, unlike the ACLU and the pro-illegal immigrationists, at least the WGA will admit that there's a problem - and that it needs to be fixed.

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