Identity Loans and Identity Theft: Illegal Immigrants in a Restricted Labor Market
Readers of the above noted essay will observe that the ability to work under a false identity is a function of key data disconnects. Integrate the data so that one person has one identity everywhere s/he "appears," and changes in their work status propagate throughout the system and, the incidence of immigration-worker-related identity thefts/borrowings declines dramatically.
Why? Because unless one is very well off and indifferent to the sum of the benefits one receives from the government, one is not going to be keen to allow someone else to compromise them. For example:
- One receiving some sort of welfare benefit. That benefit is reduced in proportion to the wages one earns. Nobody receiving a welfare benefit is going to be keen to see them reduced (or eliminated) because an immigrant to whom they've lent their identity earns wages that become known to the welfare system's databases.
- In a fully integrated system, one who's lent their identity to an immigrant, should that immigrant commit a crime, other than borrowing an identity, runs the risk of losing a host of opportunities and rights (for example, the right to vote in states that don't allow convicted felons to vote) should the identity borrower "get out of line." Background checks will reveal the behavior of both the true owner and the person who is using the owner's identity.
Of course, the instant the government moves to aggregate one's data across all the various sources of official data -- SSA, CMS, IRS, state tax agencies, DMVs, DHS, bureaus of vital statistics, various licensing organizations, etc. -- citizens bitch and moan about their privacy being violated. The software systems that interface with one another need not be designed and implemented to reveal the details of "this or that" to third parties who haven't a "need to know." They need only update a record in a system somewhere, say welfare organizations, to adjust the person's benefit due to the borrower's earning amounts and notification of that update's having happened to the identity owner of record.