Employers easily can check whether a job applicant has a valid Social Security number, but it is not required, and many don't. The Internal Revenue Service has the same mismatched information, but federal law protects the privacy of taxpayers - no matter how they earned their money. "We don't care what you do, as long as you put it on a tax return," said Bill Steiner, an IRS spokesman.
"I don't buy the notion that if they pay their taxes, somehow that makes it right," said Jim Ludwick, the president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. Ludwick said employers should be required to check the validity of Social Security numbers of job applicants. "That would go far toward clearing up the whole thing," he said. "If you're in the country illegally and you can't get a job, then you are likely to self-deport."
By some estimates, illegal immigrants pump as much as $7 billion in taxes into the Social Security trust fund each year.
The Oregon Center for Public Policy, a group that advocates for low-income people, estimates that illegal immigrants in Oregon pay $56 million to $79 million each year in Social Security taxes.
The IRS can fine employers $50 for each inaccurate wage report, but government audits have found no evidence that the fine has ever been imposed.
The IRS offers people who are not eligible for a Social Security number a special tax identification number, so they can pay income taxes owed from money earned on jobs they are not allowed to have. Since 1996, about $50 billion in income taxes has been paid through this system.
The Social Security Administration sends letters each year to employers with significant numbers of mismatched W-2 wage reports. These letters also are not generally shared with immigration officials. Although the letters warn that the mismatch does not reflect a worker's immigration status, employers often use them as a pretext to fire workers.
When federal agents swept into the Fresh Del Monte Produce plant last month, they were armed with information that about 90 percent of the plant's workers had invalid Social Security numbers. But that information alone would not have sparked the raid, officials said.
"If you take a standard case of an unauthorized worker working under someone else's Social Security number, just so they can have the job, as a rule, it's not a great case for us," said Jonathan Lasher, a spokesman for the inspector general's office of the Social Security Administration.
"Workers like that don't stay in one place very long. By the time we begin an investigation, the chances are they're going to be gone," Lasher said. "One worker has a relatively small impact on Social Security."
The agency does get involved if an employer is obtaining bogus Social Security numbers for its workers, which is the allegation in the Fresh Del Monte case.
These issues simmered just below the surface of the more hotly debated points of President Bush's immigration reform package that was recently shot down in the U.S. Senate.
The president's plan would have given the Department of Homeland Security more access to Social Security information. And there were proposals to deny immigrants any chance to claim Social Security benefits from past unauthorized work, and to require employers to verify the status of job applicants.
In recent congressional testimony, James B. Lockhart III, deputy commissioner for the Social Security Administration, defended the agency's philosophy:
"It should be noted that, although non-citizens may be residing and working illegally in the United States, they are contributing their labor, paying required taxes and accumulating an earnings record with SSA in the same manner as legal workers," Lockhart said.
"SSA's policy of allowing such workers who obtain legitimate (Social Security numbers) to re-create their earnings records to receive SSA benefits is drawn from the agency's mission, history and understanding of the Social Security Act, rather than from a lack of concern for immigration law."
Explanations like this infuriate foes of illegal immigration, who want to see existing laws enforced and strengthened.
Social Security officials say they don't know how much of the mismatch problem results from unauthorized workers but acknowledge they probably are the major cause.
The number of mismatches shot up after Congress banned employers from "knowingly" hiring illegal workers in 1986, spawning a black market in bogus Social Security cards and numbers.
Audits have revealed that a small number of employers account for a disproportionate number of reports in the no-match file, and nearly all of them are in the services, agricultural or restaurant industries.
In one case, 89 percent of the 2001 wage reports submitted by an agricultural employer in Florida contained mismatches. One Oregon employer had 18,228 suspended wage reports between 1997 and 2001, representing $68 million in wages.
Immigration-rights advocates argue that allowing law enforcement access to Social Security or tax information would lead to harassment of workers and drive more people into the underground economy.
"The individuals I work with are very much torn," said Steve Manning, a Portland immigration lawyer. "They certainly want to comply with the tax system, but at the same time, by complying with the tax system, are they going to be placing themselves in jeopardy?"
(statesmanjournal.com)
