Identity Theft Is Okay When used for a job? New York Times Article
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The New York Times ran a large article spread today covering something we have been talking about for a long time: Identity theft isn't just about financial gain. Oh really? You mean that those cute Citibank ads aren't really explaining the whole problem of Identity Theft to me? Parts of the article seem to offer that it's okay for people to enter this country illegally, and use the social security numbers of Americans to get work. What the article seems to be suggesting is that we should we really distiguish between: from Someone who does someting illegal in order to do something illegal That's the way I read that paragraph anyway. The statistical data might be interesting to have, but what does it really matter? Identity Theft is Identity Theft, regardless if it's a means to a positive or a negative end. The article goes on to show this quote from a professor of sociology at Princeton
A subsidy? The only way that illegals are somehow "subsidizing" the aggregate of American taxpayers is if you look at the tiny little issue of immigrants paying into a system they illegally entered, from which they will never draw benefits. Let's look at the bigger picture for a moment. Financial institutions, and ultimately consumers, lose billions of actual dollars every year to identity theft losses. Factor in the time people lose while dealing with the issue, and identity theft becomes extremely expensive. The "subsidy" that an illegal pays into the system for a $10/hour (or less) job is far outweighed by the costs each of us incur, as legitimate and legal American taxpayers, for the people working in our courts and financial systems who spend thousands of hours each year working to help the people who are victimized by Identity Theft and fraud.
She did all of this simply to clear a record of the damage that had been done by someone who didn't even want to do her harm. An illegal immigrant, who took the identity of her 3 year old daughter, simply wanted to have a better life while living and working in the United States. However, imagine if that illegal had actually wanted to do her harm financially, or, at the very least, simply didn't care.
Mr. Smith went on to be quoted as saying:
I guarantee that Mr. Smith would not have felt the same way, had he been unfortunate enough to suddenly find himself the father of Bailey, the daughter with a criminal record, wanted for check fraud in four states. He also won't feel that way when his daughter's information goes through the reseller network and suddenly there are 37 jobs his daughter has never had associated with her social security number. Particularly if those are jobs he wouldn't want her to have. All in all, the New York Times did some good research for this piece. The problem of illegal immigrants using social security numbers to get jobs in the names of actual Americans is not going away, and the NYT is right to point out that something has to be done here. However, as with most of the information people are receiving about Identity Theft, they're simply not presenting the whole picture to an American public that really doesn't understand what's happening, or how big the problem of Identity Theft has become.
Morning Coffee
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