Fergie's Tech Blog

Hidden Cost of Illegal Immigration: ID Theft

Bob Sullivan writes in The Red Tape Chronicles:

In the noisy immigration debate raging in Washington, there is one voice NOT being heard.

The voice of identity theft victims.

Behind many of the nation’s millions of undocumented workers are someone else's documents. To get a job, illegal immigrants need a Social Security number, and they often borrow one. As victim Melody Millet is fond of saying, U.S. citizens are being forced to share their identities with undocumented immigrants to give corporate America a steady supply of cheap labor.

Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans are right now sharing their identities with immigrants and don't know it. It is the dirty little secret of the immigration issue: By not dealing directly with the undocumented worker situation, the U.S government is actually encouraging identity theft. In fact, one can argue that the origins of the identity theft epidemic can be traced to the immigration issue.

posted by Fergie @ 3/31/2006 09:20:00 AM