Advocates for illegal immigrants often argue that working in this country is not a crime. But it is when you steal someone’s identity to find a job.
Federal and state laws are making it more difficult to hire people with forged identities — pushing many illegal immigrants to buy real identities from brokers. Even if those who steal identities do not use them to raid bank accounts, they create a nightmare for the people they violated in the form of IRS audits, bad credit scores and legal fees.
This is no small problem. As Steven Malanga wrote in “Illegal in More Ways Than One” in the spring 2008 issue of City Journal, “Government statistics probably grossly underestimate the size of the problem. Many local police departments don’t track identity theft accurately, and the [Federal Trade Commission] only reports complaints that it receives. By combining data on complaints with FTC consumer surveys, which show that far more people have had their identity stolen than report it, Identity Theft 911 estimates that in Arizona alone, some 1.57 million people, or a quarter of the state’s population, have been victims over the last six years.”
That is why it’s right for Republican Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold to crack down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Last year he signed an executive order requiring companies doing business with the county to comply with federal immigration rules or lose their contract.
Now the operator of three Anne Arundel County-owned golf courses is coming under scrutiny in connection with hiring illegal immigrants. Rich Katz, vice president of Vienna, Va.-based Billy Casper Golf, says the firm is “finalizing the details that ultimately establishes our firm is in compliance with the law.”
Good if it is.
But Leopold should not hesitate to fire the firm if its documentation proves lacking. No Maryland county — or the state — should be doing business with firms that tolerate employees who ruin lives and cost taxpayers millions in the form of higher law enforcement costs and personal expenses and time for those forced to clear their names.
