A new dragnet for illegal workers

Through the 1970s and 1980s, anyone could make up an SSN and no one would pay attention, says Chris Hibbert of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in Palo Alto, Calif.

By the 1990s, employees needed a matching name and number, unless their employer turned a blind eye. Then, people with access to numbers, such as bank employees or healthcare workers, started selling them for $20 to $100 apiece, he says. Recently, the Social Security Administration arrested some of its own employees in Chicago for selling numbers to illegal immigrants.

In 2000, the government arrested or indicted 219 people in 182 cases for using falsified SSNs. Last year, there were 242 subjects in 207 cases, and overall the Social Security Administration said that about 21 million names did not match up with Social Security numbers for any number of reasons - ranging from marriages to foreign names to fraud.

To pursue these cases - as well as other instances of fraud - there are 279 criminal investigators working for the Social Security inspector general.

Social Security investigators stress that it is the changed world since Sept. 11 that is causing the sudden interest in immigrants' documentation. "If someone can falsify documents and get a high-security badge, they can potentially put a bomb on a plane or anything else," says Dennis Lynch, special agent in charge of Social Security's Strategic Enforcement Division. "We are talking issues of protecting our critical infrastructure, including dams, bridges, and nuclear power plants."

Yet the rush to secure the airports illustrates some of the difficulties involved. Sometimes, for example, the documents that federal agents are pouring over are not up to date. In Salt Lake City, one person charged had left the airport for a construction job two months prior to the raid. The charges against him were dropped - as were those against pregnant women and mothers with newborns.

All this is part of larger changes taking place behind the scenes in the nation's airports. It's not just the screeners - now federal employees - who are under the microscope. Now, it's almost everyone who carries a security badge. For example, under recently passed federal legislation, anyone who handles baggage must be a US citizen.

This may have massive ramifications, since union officials say almost 80 percent of the baggage handlers in Los Angeles and San Francisco don't qualify.

"All this sets a dangerous precedent, equating security with citizenship," says Solange Bitol, an immigration lawyer with the Service Employees International Union. "Many of these people are trying to live the American dream and in many cases are even more patriotic."

For example, in Salt Lake City, one family had purchased a house with money saved from the past five years. Now, they are likely to be deported. "I don't see happy endings," says Mark Alvarez, an attorney representing several of those arrested.

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