No-Match Letters: A Really Stupid And Futile Gesture To Be Done On Somebody's Part?

Couple of days ago I saw someone at the WSJ despairing about the new "No Match" letters, a method of enforcing immigration law against business that rely on illegal labor. The WSJ was despairing because they said they would work too well. But not everyone agrees that it will be effective at all.

And by "not everyone" I mean the Bush Administration. From the San Jose Murky News:

A week after unveiling a major crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants, the Bush administration is now conceding that its most heavily touted weapon in pursuing employers - an assault against Social Security fraud - will be nearly useless.

That's because when the Social Security Administration warns employers about bogus identification numbers, it remains barred from also alerting the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that's supposed to hand out penalties.

In addition, federal promises to hold companies responsible for hiring illegal immigrants could potentially be stymied by several other issues: Employers are still not required to check a new employee's Social Security number against a free federal database, there could be long gaps between when an employee is hired to when the warnings are issued each year, and there is no way to follow up on employees who have been fired. In many cases, illegal workers could still hop from job to job without being caught.

One of the good parts of the late unlamented shamnesty bill was a provision to take down the firewall between the social security administration and Homeland Security that effectively prevents a criminal investigation originating with a no-match letter. Given that someone using a fake SSN might be a terrorist, even if the overwhelming majority aren't, it's just appalling that that data isn't being shared in order to give DHS a chance to mine it and separate the dangerous elements from the merely illegal.

And besides that, of course, to send ICE in to sniff around.

The next time Congress takes this issue on, that provision ought to be in whatever package they give us.

(PS: Yeah, I snuck in a post. Fish gotta fly, birds gotta swim, See-Dub gotta blog.)