Calling Ruth Munson!

Senate Bill 1878 has passed the Illinois Senate and is now before the House. Instead of "forbidden" under the current law, checking the Social Security Number of new hires is now "discouraged" under SB 1878.

But at the same time, the bill tells state agencies AND cities they CANNOT use E Verify. And, they can't require contractors to use it as part of their bid to do city work.

If this passes, TWO of AFLA's initiatives regarding illegal aliens will be against the law. And these two are the same ones the city has agreed to do.

But government agencies get fooled by new hires just like everyone else. Here a link to a 2006 report by the Social Security Administration Inspector General:

http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/A-08-05-15138.pdf

Below is a screen print of page 4 of that report (pdf page 6).
Hint: Click on the image below for a clearer version of the chart.


It seems to me that government agencies ought to be concerned about who they hire. As I told the Elgin City Council, hiring an illegal alien to spread mulch is not a serious issue. Failing to detect one working at the water treatment plant IS as serious issue.

The State Legislature needs to fix the wording of the verification legislation to allow screening by the State of Illinois and Home Rule Municipalities. Better yet, they need to just STAY OUT of the matter altogether and let the federal laws prevail.



Ruth Munson needs to hear from you on this matter. After all, she's elected to represent YOUR interests.



Call her at 847-622-1048 or e-mail her at ruthmunson@ruthmunson.com.


Thanks!

The Summit Street Art Exhibit…

...is officially OPEN for the season.

It is located in the tunnel under Summit Street at Hiawatha. Bring a flashlight. Don't come alone.

Here’s some of the work photographed just this morning. Some of it looks pretty serious, though I am no expert.

Update: As of tonight, the graffiti has been painted over. What quick response. I don't know when they did it but it was less than 12 hours after it was reported. The city standard is five working days once it is reported.

AFLA encourages you to contact the city when you see graffiti.

Dancing with ICE

Perhaps by design, there are never enough resources to deal with the illegal alien population. No politician will own up to supporting mass deportation because they have allowed the problem to get so big that it would be impractical to do so.

And the performance level of enforcement agencies tells the whole story. In one area alone (deportation of fugitive absconders) it will take 20 years to clear the backlog at current levels! And that figure assumes no new names will be added to the list!

And it rolls downhill as they say. For example, the new Kane County jail. Despite the fact that the old jail only holds 399 inmates and we have been renting space in other county jails since 1999 (to the tune of $4 MILLION last year), the new jail is going to be too small the day it opens with 640 beds.

Even judges who understand the need to incarcerate don’t have anywhere to send the bad guys.

And local cops really don’t need more tasks on their plate.

But cops and prosecutors are worried that all the loopholes in Homeland Security make arresting illegal aliens and reporting them an exercise in futility.

ICE might actually make matters WORSE if bureaucracy prevails. How so?

Well, let’s say the local cops pick up a guy for DUI. It turns out he is an illegal alien. The reasonable flow would be for him to sit in jail until he is sentenced and serves his time. Then Immigration sends him home.

Problem one: A low bond is set by the judge.
Problem two: ICE agrees to deport him (unlikely in the first place).
Problem three: He gets a free ride home at OUR expense, only to sneak back in the next day.
Problem four: The DUI case cannot proceed without the defendant and a warrant is issued.
Problem five: He’s back in town with a new set of fake IDs and back behind the wheel.

To do it right, we’d need to set a high bond, find a bed for him in a jail somewhere until he goes through the trial process, finance his defense, find a bed for him to serve his sentence, then deport him upon release, AND HE STILL COMES BACK IN WHENEVER HE WANTS!

But the SOP for Immigration is to deport him whenever he is released back out onto the street, be that recognizance, making bail, or end of sentence.

So the police and the prosecutor really have to get out the crystal ball and start analyzing the situation. How severe is the crime? Who is the judge? How full is the jail? How much bail money can the perp come up with? What do the victims expect? Is there a financial restitution amount and what is the likelihood the victims will ever collect? Is electronic monitoring an option? What are the flight risk factors?

At the end of the day, deportation might be the most severe (and most certain) form of punishment. It will slow him down. It will put him on record with Immigration as a repeat violator. It will put him at risk for capture at the border if he tries to come back. And maybe his pals here and back home will start to get the message that living in the United States is no longer a cakewalk.

But we need to give police and prosecutors the leeway to do what they think is best as long as we aren’t being hoodwinked by some sanctuary policy (written or de facto) and as long as they aren’t copping the attitude that, “It’s not my job.”

And we must never lose sight of the fact that this is a huge national problem. We recently passed the 4,000 mark in soldier fatalities in the Iraq war. We saw headlines and protests galore. Why then is there no outcry about the 13 people a day (according to Congressman Steve King) who die at the hands of illegal aliens driving drunk? That’s 4,745 people a year…and those are civilian deaths right here at home.

Deterring illegal aliens may not be politically fashionable, but it IS necessary.

The finer points of ID theft

Just like anything else, there is good, better, and best quality in fake IDs. Well, good quality isn’t so good, but it is cheap.

For example, someone creates a fake social security number by picking digits out of a hat. Maybe the number doesn’t exist. Or maybe it belongs to a dead woman in Wyoming. Not so good if it is presented as ID by a 25 year-old man trying to get a job in Illinois. That one is easy to spot.

The “better” quality ID is a real social security number for a real person of roughly the same age, sex, and ethnicity. And your supplier provides you with a decent fake birth certificate. With those two items you can assume the identity of the other person, get a drivers license and credit cards.

One would think that with computers these days, the IRS and/or Social Security Administration would be able to alert authorities that Juan Valdez was working in Illinois AND California at the same time.

Don’t bet on it. First of all, these cases seem to come to the surface when a victim gets a tax bill and starts investigating. It isn’t automatic. Second, law enforcement wouldn’t have the capacity to begin investigating all those duplicate situations. Immigration doesn’t have the manpower and local police aren’t sitting around waiting for something to do.

And don’t forget, the county jail is full.

The “best” ID is sharing with your cousin who IS legal. All earnings and documents go to someone in the family who is about your same age. It looks like Juan Valdez has two jobs here in Elgin, when in fact one of the Juans is cousin Roberto.

The only problem is if Roberto gets arrested for something and his true identity is revealed. Then both of them are in big trouble…Well, not exactly because our system is overloaded and the chances of suffering real consequences are remote.

We bring this up because some AFLA folks assume that employers are scumbags for hiring illegals. Some are; some aren’t.

For example, an illegal was recently picked up at Hansen Plastics. We have learned that Hansen Plastics verifies their hiring documents. The ID thief presented them with a valid Social Security card and an ID that matched the name, description, and approximate age of the real person. They had no way of knowing the person was illegal.

There are efforts sometime in the future to tie the ID process to something with a photo (such as a drivers license) so employers can cross-check with government records somewhere. Even that is not fool-proof, but it is better than nothing.

It all point to the need for comprehensive enforcement. Border security, employer sanctions, and removing the magnets (anchor baby citizenship, free public education, welfare benefits, and free medical care) all need to be addressed.

And we need to step up internal enforcement to detect and deport those who are found to be here illegally. The odds of getting caught and removed need to go way up. And, of course, businesses with a pattern of hiring illegals need to suffer.

Here’s a letter AFLA received from the President of Hansen Plastics, who was very responsive and honest about the situation:

“I would first of all like to thank you for bringing this situation to my attention and giving me the opportunity to reply to some of the concerns being voiced in our community.

First, let me start by saying that we do verify the Social Security numbers OF ALL Hansen Plastics employees to insure they are of legal working status. That being said, we all need to understand that the verification only tells us that the Number is a match to the name, date of birth, and gender of the employee being checked. In this identity theft case, the only identity theft case that we have been involved in, all of these did match. I would also like to point out that this person had a State ID issued by the DMV.

I have also called and talked to Detective James Rosher of the Elgin Police Department who has assured me that there is no way that Hansen Plastics could have known that this person had stolen someone else’s identity. Our heart goes out to the victim of this crime and we agree that more needs to be done to quickly catch and bring to justice these criminals.

Let me close by asking a question. When we call in a SSN and more than one address is attached to that number shouldn’t that red flag that number to be checked internally by the Social Security Administration?

Please feel free to share this with anyone you would like.

Regards,
Roy Lilly
President
Hansen Plastics Corp”


His letter points out that we are at the mercy of government to fix this problem and only we can create the pressure needed to get them to take action.