Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
The Washington Times reported in 2017 that millions of illegal aliens are using stolen Social Security numbers and that “the IRS doesn’t do a very good job of letting those American citizens and legal immigrants know they’re being impersonated.”
Breaking U.S. immigration laws isn’t a victimless offense, as “angel families” know.
“The theft creates major problems for the American citizens and legal foreign workers whose identities are stolen, and who have to deal with explaining money they never earned.”
The IRS apparently can’t keep up with this fraud, so states want to be allowed to prosecute illegal aliens for stealing Social Security numbers. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a case out of Kansas.
The state’s highest court contended that only the federal government has the power to prosecute fraudsters who are illegal aliens, but Kansas says otherwise.
From Bloomberg (emphasis added):
Kansas says the dispute is more about identity theft than illegal immigration. The state is trying to reinstate the convictions of three men who got restaurant jobs using another person’s Social Security number.
“Identity crime is a problem that far exceeds the capacity of the United States alone to prosecute,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt argued in court papers.
In throwing out the convictions, the top Kansas court said the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act bars state prosecutions based on information contained in the federal I-9 form, which employers use to verify work eligibility. The court pointed to a provision in the law that lets prosecutors use the I-9 “and any information contained in or appended to such form” only for specified federal crimes.
Bloomberg reported that the state’s prosecutors used the illegal alien’s tax forms, with the stolen Social Security number on them, not the I-9 form.
This ought to be a no-brainer – but these days, it seems nothing is. Whatever happened to common sense?! Here’s hoping the Supreme Court will do the right thing – or, if the law is really so badly written as to prohibit the states from taking action, that Congress will act.