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Social Security Scales Back Worker Inquiries
By Mary Beth Sheridan
The U.S. government is scaling back an aggressive program to contact all
employers whose workers were using bogus or incorrect Social Security
information, concluding that the effort produced few corrections to its
records.
The program last year had a major, if unintended, impact: It exposed many
unauthorized immigrants who were working "on the books," using stolen or
made-up Social Security numbers. Confronted by their employers, tens of
thousands of them quietly left their jobs or were fired, according to
estimates
by immigration advocates and attorneys.
The Social Security Administration had launched the initiative, sending
letters last year to about 950,000 employers who had at least one worker
whose
name and number did not match Social Security files. Government officials
said
at the time that they were simply trying to get employers and workers to
correct the agency's records.
But few responded, said Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for the Social Security
Administration. As a result, he said, the agency plans to contact only
about
130,000 employers this year in an effort to be "using our resources
effectively
-- time, money, staff, that kind of thing."
Immigrant advocates and members of business groups, who had protested the
earlier Social Security program, said they were pleased with the change.
Activists for reduced immigration criticized the move and said it
underlined
the government's lack of coordination in targeting unauthorized workers.
"It's aggravating beyond belief that the Social Security Administration
isn't
waking up to its responsibility to be part of the federal government's
immigration enforcement arm," said Dan Stein, executive director of the
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The Social Security Administration stumbled into the contentious issue of
illegal immigration because of a major bookkeeping problem. For years, it
has
received a growing pile of money from mystery workers whose names or
numbers do
not match Social Security files. In 2000, the contributions from such
workers
and their employers totaled about $6 billion -- money that goes into the
general fund, since it cannot be linked to individual workers.
Some of the mystery workers are legally employed but simply have a
mistake in
their records: a misspelling of their name, or a maiden name listed
instead of
their married one.
But the government has found that most "no-match" cases are in industries
that
rely on low-skilled and migrant workers, such as restaurants, farms and
hotels.
That leads such people as Steven A. Camarota of the Center for
Immigration
Studies, a think tank that favors reduced immigration, to question why
Social
Security is cutting back on the letters and not coordinating with other
agencies to target undocumented workers. The number of people in the
country
illegally has swelled to an estimated 7 million to 8 million.
"This process . . . could have been an important step in controlling or
reducing illegal immigration," Camarota said.
Social Security officials respond that that's not their job. In addition,
they
say that privacy laws bar them from giving their information to
immigration
authorities. Although the agency sent follow-up letters last year to
employers
who ignored their first notices, it did not have the power to do much
more,
said spokesman Mark Hinkle.
"We're not an enforcement agency," he said.
Immigrant advocates argue that unauthorized workers were not the only
ones who
lost jobs. They said some bosses panicked and fired employees named in the
letters -- even though the notices emphasized that they were not grounds
for
dismissal.
"Many companies used this as an excuse to terminate the employment of
various
people" without cause, said Saul Solorzano, executive director of CARECEN,
an
immigrant social-service agency in Columbia Heights.
He said Social Security's plan to send fewer letters is "better, to avoid
confusion."
The impact of the letters on the Washington area was "significant but not
severe," said Elissa McGovern, head of the local chapter of the American
Immigration Lawyers Association. "It was felt in the service sectors --
hotels,
restaurants, landscaping, industries where you have high turnover."
Immigrant and business groups had urged the Social Security
Administration to
change its program. Did their efforts succeed?
"I'd like to think we had some impact," said Theresa Brown, director of
immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She noted, however,
that
the Social Security Administration attributed its shift to the lack of
results
from the letter-sending campaign.
Hinkle said that this year's letters will go only to employers who have
at
least 10 workers whose information does not match Social Security files.
Such
people have to make up at least 0.5 percent of the employer's personnel to
trigger a letter.
The agency will continue to send individual letters to the homes of all
employees whose name or number do not match Social Security records.
Experts who work with or study immigrants said the "no-match" program did
not
appear to reduce the number of people in the country illegally. Many
workers
who were confronted with the letters "went somewhere else" to work, said
Jeffrey Passel, a researcher at the Urban Institute. "Or they showed up on
Monday with a different Social Security number."
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