Amy Taylor

Following Up on the Swift Raids

The workplace raids by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) last week at six Swift facilities were just that -- workplace raids with the goal of detaining and deporting undocumented workers. Somewhere along the line, ICE hired a new marketing consultant and rebranded their project as a crackdown on identity theft. It is common practice for employers to look the other way when their workers use false Social Security numbers. New government tracking programs, however, have begun to identify workers using social security numbers that do not match employment records. It seems that some profit-seeking individuals have now begun to sell the Social Security numbers of real U.S. citizens (some of them stolen and some of them bought) to undocumented workers, which are not caught by the tracking program, called Basic Pilot. This type of "identity theft" should certainly be stopped. However, the ICE raids last week were not an earnest attempt to end the trafficking in identity information.

If ICE were truly concerned with putting an end to such a practice, it would be targeting the individuals who are selling such information, not the individual consumers. It is clear ICE was up to business as usual, since only 5% of the 1,200 people detained were charged with identity theft crimes. The situation reminds me of the War on Drugs tactic of cracking down on individual drug consumers in order to affect the drug trade. If ICE were serious about identity theft, it would be going after the supply side of the equation. Raids do not address the root causes of immigration. Immigrants are coming here because of the endless demand for cheap labor and because they desperately need the work. There is simply too much demand for sporadic raids to change. It sounds like marketing to me - as I said last week, who is not against identity theft?

I'm sure many folks are relieved to see a crackdown on unauthorized workers, and I'm sure that result was intended. People across the country are unsatisfied with the job our government has done to address our broken immigration system. Action must be taken to pass immigration reform legislation that addresses our 12 million undocumented workers, our endless visa backlog, the needs of our economy, and the race to the bottom that results when native-born workers must compete for jobs with a class of people living under the constant threat of deportation.

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Posted at 9:00 AM, Dec 20, 2006 in
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