Have you applied for a job? If so, you were probably required to provide your Social Security number as part of the application process. This is the same process that illegal immigrants go through when they are trying to apply for a job, except for the fact that they do not have a Social Security number. Not wanting to give their illegal status away by refusing to put anything down, they make up some numbers. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants who use fake Social Security numbers when applying for a job cannot be charged with identity theft.
While the odds are slim, there is a chance that you could come up with a valid Social Security number for someone you’ve never met by simply picking numbers at random. Also, the odds are you might transpose the numbers on your application accidentally, and that new number might match someone else’s number. Under the way the Bush Administration, illegal immigrants who randomly created valid Social Security numbers would be threatened with aggravated identity theft. This charge would carry a two-year prison sentence. Illegal immigrants were encouraged to plead down to a lesser charge, such as document fraud, and agree to deportation.
The argument by the Supreme Court is that identity theft had to be premeditated and targeted action, rather than a chance happening. As Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, the offender had to “knowingly transfers, possesses or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.” He continued with the following example, “If we say that someone knowingly ate a sandwich with cheese, we normally assume that the person knew both that he was eating a sandwich and that it contained cheese.” Illegal immigrants, however, do not know of the identity they are stealing.
I agree with this ruling, and not because it makes life easier for illegal immigrants. Not that it is likely, but there is always the chance that the practice could be abused by the government against otherwise lawful citizens simply due to a typo on a credit card application (for example). Imagine you had poor penmanship and accidentally wrote a “6″ instead of a “0,” and that error resulted you in spending two years in jail? With this ruling, the chances of abuse in this manner are dramatically reduced. I am glad the court voted unanimously on this case.
Palm Beach Post – “Court rules for immigrant in ID theft case”
Chicago Sun-Times – “Immigration law gets dose of sanity”
Los Angeles Times – “Supreme Court limits identity theft law”
Wired – “Supreme Court: Feds Abusing Identity Theft Law”
The New York Times – “Justices Limit Use of Identity Theft Law in Immigration Cases”
Reuters – “U.S. government loses immigrant identity-theft case”
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