Undocumented workers and SS numbers: They are not crooks

Whenever the Congress decided to work on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, you often heard laws coming up about undocumented people not being able to regularize if they used false social security numbers. This is something that was considered when the DREAM ACT came up in the Senate in October 2006.

The truth is that just about anyone that is not documented has to use a false Social Security number if they want to work. The underground economy might be there, but usually those jobs are not steady enough to support anyone. Workers need to be employed by companies, and that means needing someone's S.S. number.

Before you begin panicking that everyone's number has been stolen or you will lose your benefits, consider that most of the numbers are either made up or taken from deceased persons. Immigrant workers don't want to steal your social security benefits. They just want to work. In fact, you have little reason to worry. Even if they put money into the S.S. system, it is highly unlikely they will ever get any benefits that U.S. residents and citizens get from Social Security. In other words, their money goes down the drain - at least for them. The money, however, is a great kitty for the rest of us to make use of when S.S. begins to run dry...


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/20/AR2008102001075.html?hpid=topnews

Supreme Court to Hear Case on Illegal Immigrants' Use of Fake IDs

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2008; 1:53 PM

The Supreme Court today accepted a case with significant implications for the government's crackdown on illegal immigration, agreeing to review whether prosecutors have to prove that defendants in aggravated identity theft cases knew they were victimizing a real person.

The justices will hear the appeal of Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican illegal immigrant who used false identification to get a job at a steel plant in Illinois. He was convicted of aggravated identity theft and other counts and sentenced to more than six years in prison.

Flores-Figueroa argued that the government failed to prove that he knew the fraudulent documents belonged to a real person as opposed to being fabricated. Lower courts ruled that the government did not have to prove that, accepting the Justice Department's position in this and other aggravated identify theft cases. Three appellate courts have rendered decisions backing the government.

But three other appellate courts have ruled otherwise, and the Supreme Court is expected to resolve the dispute.

The importance of the case to prosecutors was shown during a raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in rural Iowa in May. As hundreds of immigration agents descended on the plant, prosecutors summoned defense lawyers to the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids.

Their message was blunt: The illegal immigrants arrested must plead guilty to lesser counts or face indictment on charges of aggravated identity theft and possible mandatory two-year prison terms.

"It was a hammer over everyone's head," said Dan Vondra, a lawyer who represented several of the 302 detainees who quickly took the deal. "For these people, two years in federal prison was unbearable."

The raid highlighted the Bush administration's increasing use of the tough new charge in its crackdown on illegal immigrants at work sites, part of the escalating campaign against undocumented immigrants nationwide. But the tactic is under attack from critics, and the split among appellate courts over the government's burden of proof in aggravated identity theft cases has now prompted the Supreme Court review.

An adverse Supreme Court ruling probably would not affect the government's ability to charge aggravation in non-immigration identity theft cases. A criminal who, for example, steals someone's Social Security number and empties his or her bank account clearly knows he is victimizing a real person.

But experts said a loss for the Justice Department in the Flores-Figueroa case would devastate its ability to bring aggravated identity theft cases against illegal immigrants because most of them do not know whether their fake IDs belong to someone else.

"It would effectively gut a provision clearly designed to crack down on immigration-related identity theft," said Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tough immigration enforcement.

Critics of the administration's approach say that the charge is not needed and that deporting illegal immigrants should be enough. "They're just piling on," said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

But federal officials say the charge is a key part of their arsenal because its penalties are substantially tougher than those of other immigration counts. Officials point out that terrorists use false identities, a sensitive issue since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "Post 9/11, we also recognize that identity theft poses a security risk to all of us," Deborah J. Rhodes, senior associate deputy attorney general, said in July at a congressional hearing on the Iowa raid on an Agriprocessors plant in Postville. The raid was the largest criminal work-site enforcement operation in U.S. history.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which led the raid, declined to comment on the pending Supreme Court case. Pat A. Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman, said the agency "is going to seek the highest-level charges it can get on anyone it encounters in a work-site operation or any other kind of illegal activity."

Congress created the aggravated identity theft charge as part of a 2004 law targeting identity theft broadly. The felony charge is defined as knowingly transferring, possessing or using "without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person."

The conviction of Flores-Figueroa in federal court in Iowa was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.

"Someone who intends to steal another's identity is worthy of greater punishment than one who unintentionally picks an identification number out of thin air that happens to match one already issued to someone else," attorneys for Flores-Figueroa argued in a brief to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department's solicitor general's office contends that the conviction should be upheld but asked the court to take up the matter because "there is now a clear and entrenched conflict among the courts of appeals."

Prosecutors also defend their actions in the Postville raid, in which 389 illegal immigrants were detained. About two-thirds of them were initially charged by criminal complaint with aggravated identity theft, but those charges were dropped. Most of the 302 defendants who pleaded guilty to lesser felony immigration charges were sentenced to five months in prison.

"We had evidence that supported the more severe charge," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Cedar Rapids. "I suppose it depends on what side you're on whether that's a carrot or a stick."

A law ignored for decades is now labeling immigrants as criminals

If the U.S. populace had any idea how many people use false social security cards - everyone would be in shock.  It may be labeled as criminal in 2008, but for decades it was a given that undocumented workers would not be punished for this.  Today however,  ICE and our present administration (who is behind all of this I believe) has decided that using a false number is a very bad thing - which is paradoxical since using a false number only leaves unclaimed money in the social security fund -   Enforcing this law means social security will lose billions that will be needed to support all the aging baby boomers.

Maybe ICE has some deal with industries to gather more inmates for prisons that can work for nothing.... you know that happened after the Civil War.  In 1865 there were only about 300 prison inmates in Texas... by 1890 there were at least a thousand - and it has kept growing (Texas is a prison state you know). A colleague of mine, Robert Perkinson has worked on a project regarding Texas prisons.  He tells me that until the 1930s in Texas, prisoners were "hired out" by the prison to private farms and basically treated like slaves.

When something goes from a minor infraction to a major crime - there is something going on in a society that is turning things upside down.

for NPR program on immigrants and false social security cards, click here

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Legal Affairs
Immigrant Rights Groups Challenge ID Theft Arrests
NPR

by Jennifer Ludden

July 24, 2008 · For years, the chief punishment for immigrants caught working illegally in the United States has been deportation. But prosecutors are now bringing criminal charges that include aggravated identity theft, which can bring a hefty prison sentence. Immigrant rights groups and some members of Congress are challenging the practice.

A congressional panel is meeting Thursday to look at the controversial fallout from an immigration raid on an Iowa meat-packing plant in May. Not long ago, illegal immigrants swept up in such raids faced administrative charges and swift deportation. But in recent years, the Bush administration has started bringing criminal charges against immigrants who use fake documents, including stolen Social Security numbers.

After the raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, more than 250 workers were sentenced to five months in prison. Rights groups, defense lawyers and even some judges are questioning the Bush administration's strategy.

Iowa immigration attorney Dan Vondra says he was stunned to see immigrant workers from the plant charged with aggravated identity theft. Congress created that law in 2004 to toughen penalties for the growing problem of identity theft.

Still, Vondra said, "When you think of identity theft, what you really want to target is somebody getting credit cards in your name, ruining your credit, using your name to commit crimes, things of that nature."

The immigrants had bought stolen Social Security numbers to help them find work, Vondra said. In fact, one of the translators at the court proceedings has said the mainly Guatemalan immigrants he encountered had no idea what a Social Security card was — let alone that the numbers on it belonged to real people.

Challenges In The Courts

Last year, another Iowa attorney used that argument in court. Gary Koos' client had been arrested at a concrete company after buying an ID off the street in order to fill out employment forms. Koos didn't think that fit the crime of aggravated identity theft.

"If you want to think of it in legal terms, it would be that a person has to be put upon notice of what the crime is," Koos said. "And in this case, it's knowingly to use someone else's identity. My client didn't know he had someone else's Social Security number, he just had a number."

Koos lost the case on appeal, and his immigrant client is now serving five years in federal prison. But Koos' argument has been backed by other appeals courts — and he thinks the Supreme Court may need to resolve the dispute.

The issue is coming up more often because of another part of the Bush administration's immigration crackdown. More and more companies are using a federal computer program that can detect fake Social Security numbers. But it can't tell when real numbers are used by another person — which has fueled a growing market for stolen IDs.

"The issue is whether people using false identifications should be held accountable for that," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in northern Iowa, which prosecuted the Agriprocessors case.

Teig said he didn't know whether any of the workers charged with aggravated ID theft had used Social Security numbers for anything but work. But that's not the point, he said.

"The point is, by the time it happens it's too late. The statute is not just designed to punish, the statute is designed to prevent," Teig said.

A Stiff Mandatory Sentence

To be clear, the Agriprocessors employees did not plead guilty to aggravated ID theft. But because the charge carries a two-year prison sentence as its mandatory minimum, it put pressure on them to accept a plea deal on lesser charges.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has called for a hearing to look at that procedure. She's also an immigration attorney, and she questions whether due process was upheld.

"Hundreds of people were convinced to plead guilty to a crime without really an adequate opportunity to see if they had any remedy under immigration law," Lofgren said. "And of course, now that they've pled guilty to a crime, they have no remedies that they might otherwise have had."

Not all arrested immigrant workers are being sentenced to jail time. But federal immigration officials say incarceration can be an important deterrent. And Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says that some victims of this kind of ID theft suffer financial and legal hardships.

"We think it's tragic and unfortunate when people break the law by coming here," Myers said, "and then break the law again by actually stealing the identity of U.S. citizens."

So far this year, the immigration agency has made more than 900 criminal arrests.

click here for NPR article