Conservative Review: Identity theft is among the most devastating crimes. Anyone who has been a victim of identity theft can attest to the long-term disruption of one’s life and property as a result of a stolen Social Security number, not to mention being on the hook for the criminality, debt, and taxes incurred by the perpetrator. There should be nothing political about solving this problem.
Yet when it comes to a primary source of identity theft – illegal immigration – the government has done everything possible to cover up the problem. Isn’t it time that Congress finally use the obvious tools it has to identify, notify, deter, and prosecute all cases in order to stop this growing menace?
As we mentioned yesterday, the fact that the illegal alien alleged murderer of Molly Tibbetts was able to work and remain in the country undetected is not an anomaly. Many illegal aliens engage in identity theft, and that is the lynchpin to their flourishing here. The absence of that loophole and the lack of an official identity would essentially make life impossible for them here and would deter them from coming.
But it’s more than just stopping illegal immigration. Regardless of one’s view on immigration, nobody wants to ignore the threat of identity theft. For better or worse, government has forced us into a Social Security identification system that defines our entire lives. As such, it is the foremost responsibility of the federal government to protect that identity. So why is it that illegals can steal our identities with impunity and the IRS and Social Security Administration (SSA) refuse to cooperate with the DHS by identifying those numbers used multiple times, informing the victims, identifying the perpetrators, and initiating prosecution against them?
Illegal immigrants are the 800-pound gorilla of identity theft
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “Eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of illegal aliens in their total population are among the top 10 states in identity theft.” In Arizona alone, over one million children are victims of stolen identity, more than four times the national rate. Hispanic-Americans with Latino-sounding surnames are most vulnerable to such theft. Illegal aliens seeking employment will often be given the stolen Social Security numbers of children by the smuggling industry, because that will take longer to be detected. It has devastating consequences for the child victims, who begin their adulthood saddled with all of the criminality, fiscal liabilities, and taxes of these illegal aliens. more here
Just trash your credit, you don’t need it and if it’s no good, nobody else can use it.
I’ve always thought that identity theft should treated the same as rape. In both cases, the victim gets the long term side effects and degradation of life.
In short, the penalty should be long term prison stay or death. My personal choice being death penalty, of course because 3 hits and a cot aren’t deterrent enough.
Credit card companies call right away if they detect anything unusual on accounts. Why can’t the Social Security Administration do the same thing? If a person is depositing $300 into their SSA account in one state, then, at the same time, starts depositing $27 per month from a state 900 miles away, shouldn’t alarm bells start going off at the SSA?
Old Oaks – I haven’t had a loan since 1991. You don’t have to trash your credit to have desired results you speak of. My auto insurance is high in part because they use credit score to help determine rate. No credit scores same as poor credit.
@ Judge….this is from my own experience…..The SSA can and does recognize when SSI numbers don’t match the name. They notify nobody. Not the IRS, Not the victim, NOBODY!!! and here’s why…
#1—-it’s billions of dollars a year that can go fund the rest of the government or SSI in general and they don’t want to give up access to the cash.
#2—–It’s SSA employees that are selling SSI numbers to wet backs/ illegals.
#3—–Ironic that Obama’s grandma worked for SSA when little Barry got a SSI number, issued in Connecticut to a guy that died in Hawaii….
#4—- you have to continue to protect the legacy of the bastard son of Frank Marshall Davis…
#5—-SSA is just a bunch of ignorant, lazy Federal employees administered by a criminal element…
irs and ssa are knowledgeable of the identity crimes. They purposely do not alert the victim. They probably don’t alert the offender, either.
What alarms me is not only the theft but, more so, the new ‘identity definition’ that is creeping in. Creepy, it is. china has it, and is having more daily. Already, in this country, all communications are monitored and recorded. License plates are scanned, as well as faces. DNA is scanned and recorded. And now fakebook is assigning ‘trustworthiness scores.’ And those are beginning to be consulted for job applications and college entrance applications. It all boils down to them defining who someone else is, and granting rights and privileges accordingly. If someone does ‘steal’ an identity, the person whose identity was stolen might not even know who that person is defined to be.
I do spend quite a bit of effort to prevent a radical change to: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The way things are going, they will have that be: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created, that they are endowed by their Creditor with certain rights which are subject to change without prior notice.’
VOTE
Old Oaks, you are spot on, my brother.
I was a victim of ID theft before it was de rigueur.
It was around 1998.
ILLEGALS in Houston got me.
Over $200,000 was taken in my name.
It took almost a year before I found out.
Didn’t cost me money directly, but it cost me time and reputation.
Dealing with the CC companies, they treated ME like a criminal.
It was proven they were illegals, but not sure if they were caught.
FUCK!!! 🙁
Since then I have gone a bit off grid, I don’t play by the same rules anymore.
What willysgoatgruff said.
Also, the only way you can get any justice out of the SS Admin is if an agent takes pity on you and helps you out on his own. ON HIS OWN. So you see your chances are slim.
I hear you DT, but I recently found a metric that blows the credit report for insurance apart. It’s your internal insurance rating of some sort, I’ve never made a claim, in decades. You’re correct about no credit killing your rating. The last report I pulled had me listed as retired, at 50 this year, nobody will take that on.
LBS, I quit in 2010, been great ever since. I still get a new truck every couple years, but I do it differently than I did prior.