Hundreds lose jobs in fed crackdown

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, Aug. 5, 2002 | 10:56 a.m.

A federal campaign to track down workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names has hit Nevada, resulting in hundreds of people losing their jobs, and confusion on the part of employers.

The sweep has resulted in at least 750,000 so-called "no match" letters being sent to companies nationwide since January, compared to 110,000 in 2001, said Mark Lassiter, spokesman for the Social Security Administration. Regional and state records on the letters are not maintained.

The idea behind the increase is to keep an accurate record of employee earnings, Lassiter said.

"We have been seeing more and more wage reports in recent years that we are unable to credit to Social Security numbers ... and we have a program to administer here," he said.

Still, in Nevada, as in in other states nationwide, undocumented immigrants and the areas of the economy in which they work -- such as hotels, restaurants and construction -- appear to be bearing the brunt of the campaign.

This has led many -- including the immigrants themselves and their advocates -- to assume that the effort is one more response to Sept. 11. But the decision to send out more letters was made in May 2000, officials said. Information from 2001 wage reports kicked off the campaign earlier this year.

"I have seen dozens of cases, both employers and employees, between myself and my colleagues," said Eva Garcia Mendoza, chairwoman of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Nevada chapter.

"They're asking, 'What can I do?' Unfortunately, in most cases, there's not much I can tell them, since the numbers are false."

The letters ask the employer to correct any mismatches within 60 days, but the SSA has no enforcement powers if the information is not corrected. However, the administration shares information with the IRS, which can fine companies $50 per employee with a mismatched number, up to $250,000.

This last fact has not escaped the notice of the Nevada Hotel & Restaurant Association's president, Van Hefner, who wrote about the topic in his monthly editorial in the August issue of a local trade magazine. Mismatches between a number and a name can occur because of a slip of the keyboard, outdated records, stolen numbers, or other reasons, Lassiter said. But in Las Vegas, thousands of undocumented immigrants pay as little as $50 for fake Social Security cards in order to get jobs. Now, some are getting caught at it.

"Desperate people do desperate things, and these people are trying to feed their families," Garcia Mendoza said. "But using a false Social Security number is a felony, and unless there's a way to legalize a worker's immigration status, there's nothing the law can do to help them."

Or the employer, who in many cases is unaware of the false numbers or has turned a blind eye to them, and is left with little choice but to lay off workers who in some cases are longtime employees.

Those scenarios are playing out across the Las Vegas Vvalley, bringing such sudden changes to an untold number of workers' households and company personnel offices.

"I've had about 20 workers come to me with this in the last two months," said immigration attorney Jeremiah Wolf Stuckiner, who worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service for 28 years before taking up a legal practice.

"For the worker, it's a tragedy but I can't condone it ... if you want to work, it's one thing, but you're also robbing someone else's ID," he said.

"As for the companies ... if all the undocumented workers don't have legitimate Social Security numbers, and they're working, then tens of thousands of people might be affected by this, and these are tens of thousands less employees in the workplace."