Dan Stein: It's Time for Worker Verification

Re “What Social Security Isn’t Meant to Do” (editorial, May 12):

Just about a year ago, the Times editorial board was among the most forceful advocates of the so-called comprehensive immigration reform bill before the Senate. A key component of that legislation — in fact, the only component that offered anything at all to law-abiding citizens and immigrants — was the promise that a secure work authorization system would deter future illegal immigration.

Now that a stand-alone bill to implement the work authorization provision is before the House with broad bipartisan support, suddenly you object on the grounds of staggering costs (which actually amount to less, on an annual basis, than California alone spends educating the children of illegal immigrants) and the bureaucratic inefficiency of the Social Security Administration.

Oddly, staggering costs and bureaucratic inefficiency did not seem to The Times to be an obstacle to a huge illegal immigrant amnesty and the implementation of new guest worker programs. The cost and the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to process tens of millions of amnesty applications, to weed out the fraudulent ones from the legitimate ones, to conduct background checks on tens of millions of applicants, and more were never a concern when it came to rewarding the people who broke our laws.

Imperfect recordkeeping on the part of the S.S.A. is not a valid reason for avoiding implementation of a work verification system in this country. It is, however, a very good reason for cleaning up the S.S.A.’s database.

Dan Stein
President, Federation for American Immigration Reform
Washington, May 12, 2008