When illegal immigrants commit identity theft, jobs that should go to Americans are at risk. Presenting false or stolen identification on a job application can pave the way to employment for noncitizens. Moreover, innocent citizens’ credit standing can be ruined for years.
But even though identity theft is a felony under the Social Security Act, the federal government shows literally no interest in pursuing charges against wrongdoers.
According to information published by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), and released in February, between 2011 and 2016, the Internal Revenue Service confirmed more than 1.3 million instances of identity fraud carried out by illegal aliens. They were individuals to whom the IRS had given Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, exclusively to people who are otherwise ineligible to work in the United States or to receive Social Security numbers.
TIGTA, the inspector general responsible for overseeing the IRS, also discovered another approximately 1.2 million cases in 2017 that involved an unauthorized worker who had filed a tax return reporting wages earned with a stolen or fabricated Social Security number.
The IRS, responding to media inquiries, was unable to name a single case that it had referred for criminal prosecution — zero for 2.5 million!
Historically, the IRS rarely notifies victims that their identities have been stolen and used by others for employment purposes, an egregious flaw that it promises to correct. IRS policy has traditionally been to defer, since “employment-related identity theft is not a tax administration issue because the SSN owner’s master file tax account is not affected.”
The agency’s nonsensical reasoning: the numbers have been “borrowed.”
Innocent victims’ plights are ignored. When auditors catch incidents in which identity fraud is indisputable, they’re advised to look the other way.
TIGTA has issued warnings to the IRS for more than two decades, or roughly since the agency created the ITIN. One IRS whistleblower said he sees violations every day, eight hours a day, but is powerless to intercede on victims’ behalf even though their credit will be destroyed without his intervention.
The Justice Department found that annually 17.6 million people have their identities stolen, and in 2014 suffered an aggregate $15.4 billion loss.
ITIN misuse also has enabled payouts of $3.4 billion in Additional Child Tax Credits as of 2015, a hefty sum at a time when the nation’s $21 trillion indebtedness is rising 36 percent faster than the economy is growing.
Ending or at least slashing identity fraud isn’t, despite what some in Congress argue, an insurmountable challenge. During debate on an amendment to the 2013 Gang of Eight bill that would have required lawful permanent resident applicants to provide all the Social Security numbers they had used since coming to the United States, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that decades of forging documents was a necessary part of unlawful presence.
A two-fold solution would include, first, mandatory E-Verify that would require employers to confirm new employees’ legal work authorization. Second, the SSA should send letters to employees that have more than one employer reporting wages on their SSNs. The employees would then have received notice that unless they’re working at more than one job, they’re identity theft victims, and can alert the proper authorities.
Congress’ two decades of turning a blind eye to identity theft and its consequences on the American labor force in terms of millions of lost jobs is inexcusable, but consistent with its indifference to U.S. workers.
— Joe Guzzardi is an analyst and researcher with Progressives for Immigration Reform who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.