An injunction preventing the Bush administration from using a flawed method of cracking down on illegal immigrants constitutes a voice of reason in the increasingly antagonistic immigration debate.
A federal judge this week stopped the administration from moving forward with a plan to use the Social Security database, which is plagued by inaccuracies, to pressure employers to fire up to 8.7 million workers suspected of being illegal immigrants.
It’s certainly true that illegal immigrants have manipulated the system, using false documents to claim a Social Security number and get a job.
But the trouble is, the database is so unreliable that tens of thousands of legal workers, some native-born and others here legally, would be caught up in the immigration crackdown.
That would be a great injustice to everyone involved — the workers, their families, and employers.
The conflict shows the need for the administration to find a way to enforce immigration laws that can pass muster with the court system. It also points out the folly of addressing a large-scale, complicated problem with a narrow solution. It’s like trying to put out a three-alarm fire with a water pistol.
In this case, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wasn’t judging the merits of the larger immigration debate. He was looking at the specifics of using this database to identify illegal workers.
The Social Security Administration keeps earnings information on workers to determine eligibility for benefits. Each year, employers turn in a form showing how much they paid employees and their Social Security numbers. When the administration is unable to match a worker’s name and number to their records, this is classified as a mismatch. There are more than 255 million mismatched records, a number that is growing by 8 million to 11 million per year.
For 13 years, the administration has tried to resolve those discrepancies by sending “no-match” letters. Some mismatches are caused by illegal immigrants falsely using a Social Security number to get a job. But many others are due to typographical errors and name changes.
Until this database is cleaned up enough to be a reliable indicator, it should not be used as a blunt instrument to pressure employers to fire people who may — or may not — be illegal immigrants.
