Letter: Blame employers for bad records

Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

Saturday's editorial headlined "A premature crackdown" criticizes the crackdown on illegal immigrants, citing as a reason that the Social Security Administration's database has errors in it. You conclude by saying that federal officials "have no business toughening the rules for everyone else until they solve their own recordkeeping and enforcement failures."

If employers have for years ignored letters from the Social Security Administration that notify them of a discrepancy between the name of an employee and the employee's Social Security number, what do you propose they do? How else can the "recordkeeping" be solved if employers continue to ignore the letters? What do you propose when hundreds of employees across the country are using the same Social Security number?

Yes, there will be situations where the Social Security Administration has bad information. But for every one of those, there will be hundreds of situations where the employee has submitted a false number to the employer. The employer has 90 days to get things corrected. That should be sufficient.

In fact, the letters sent to employers might even say something like "This employee's number has been used by thousands of workers and is blatantly false," thus letting the employer know that there is probably not a problem with Social Security's recordkeeping in such a case.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has done virtually nothing to protect the security of the homeland, when it finally actually attempt s to enforce laws already on the books, you criticize it. U ntil now, it's virtually ignored the borders, ignored the millions of illegal immigrants in this country, and managed to screw up airplane travel big time.

The American people are fed up with illegal immigration. They are tired of having to "press 1 for English." They are tired of the advocates for illegal immigrants pointing out that these people "take jobs that Americans won't take."

The crackdown on fake Social Security numbers is a small start. But it's a start.

David Adams , Las Vegas