Illegal Mexican's and Identity Theft

   An interesting article in The New York Times on how the illegal aliens in the United States are now going into buying identities that have been stolen or brought from real American citizens by way of traffickers.

   What I find somewhat amusing about this story is that 148 of the illegal aliens which were rounded up in the Swift & Company meat-packing plants were using the identities of real people. Yet we still have groups crying about how wrong it was to go into the plants in six states  to arrest the criminals.

   So what is the problem with an illegal alien using someone's identity to gain work in the United States?

“I was innocent when I came from Mexico,” said Ms. Nuñez, a petite, round-faced woman who said she was devastated to find herself in a criminal lock-up. “But they don’t give you a job so easily anymore. To get honest work, you need good documents.”

While Ms. Nuñez worked at the Swift plant pushing sides of pork into a saw that sliced off the fat, Ms. Blanco was in her hometown of Bakersfield leading a life teeming with trouble. She had been in rehabilitation to shake an addiction to the drug known as PCP. She had lost custody of her children to the state child welfare authorities, and then had regained it.

As a result, Ms. Blanco said she was distracted and paid little attention to letters three years ago from the Social Security Administration ordering her to report the employment income showing up under her number. She had never been close to taking a job.

“I don’t know the person, but I’m upset,” Ms. Blanco said of Ms. Nuñez. “I think she could get more benefit from me, from my identity, than I could from her. ”

   Of the 148 Swift workers who were arrested and charged with identity-theft, it is worth noting that none of them used the stolen I.D.'s for raiding bank accounts or credit cards.  The Social Security cards and birth certificates were used to gain employment.

However, this in itself posses some problems for the real owners of the papers.

Still, Matthew C. Allen, the senior investigations official at Immigration and Custom Enforcement, said that 326 Americans had reported financial complications and tax liabilities from having their identities used at Swift. “The victims have suffered very real consequences,” Mr. Allen said.            Read More

    Many of the Mexicans that were arrested are claiming ignorance of the law by saying that they did not know that buying the identities was a crime because they buy documents all of the time.

   A lawyer who is representing Ms. Nuñez said “She’s a mother who cut my pork chops and gave Social Security a lot of money. She deserves a medal, not an indictment.”    Source

   She deserves a medal? A medal for possibly messing up someone else's Social Security benefits and causing them some probable tax liabilities.?

   Ms. Nunez deserves some time in prison and then a deportation back to Mexico since she did not pay any taxes even though money was going into the S.S. program. The remainder of the illegal aliens deserve the same.

 

Technorati tags: illegal aliens, identity theft, Swift