Migrations & Legality

Whether in Europe and/or the Americas we live in countries founded on Christian principles and morals. This foundation is good because it rests upon a concept of human dignity and rights. It has nothing to do with religion or dogma but it is based on a very firm belief that all people, regardless of citizenship or status, are “made in the image of God”, meaning that all of us have an intrinsic value that deserves respect. In addition, these moral values promote compassion for the troubled stranger or people in need, and love and mercy for all our human brethren. Since these concepts place human beings at the top of any scale of values, the resulting social order should strive to balance the rule of law with the call to oppose unjust laws and systems violating human dignity.

The recent Arizona Immigration Law is considered unjust by some on the grounds that it may promote racial profiling and discrimination. Indeed, people should be very careful not to promote measures that might have racial overtones. However, those advocating this law argue that racial profiling is strictly prohibited and that “reasonable suspicion” is required to stop someone and ask for identification. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California has held that there are so many lawful immigrants or visitors and U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry that racial appearance can not be used. “Reasonable suspicion” is widely used to mean a law enforcement action based on the totality of the circumstances as understood by those versed and trained in the field of law enforcement.

In Europe, British police applies what they call “stop and search”, allowing police officers to search members of the public for weapons, drugs, stolen property, terrorism-related evidence or evidence of other crimes, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled the use of the power to stop and search only in cases of “reasonable suspicion” (Section 44: Terrorism Act 2000). Therefore, what “reasonable suspicion” means and what its limits are must be clear to all in order to avoid abuses.

The immigration crisis in Europe and North America and the illegality of the situation thus created is a consequence of corrupt policies and abusive practices that promoted uncontrolled immigration in the past. Illegal immigrants have been an easy prey for many years. Their fear of retaliation forced them to accept miserable working conditions and salaries and whole industries made a lot of money with their extremely cheap labor. These same industries surreptitiously promoted in their respective legislative bodies numerous restrictions that reduced legal immigration of workers to a mere trickle in most countries.

Immigration reform must take these facts into account and strongly penalize corporations and other enterprises knowingly hiring immigrants lacking a legal status. In addition, such legislation should be consistent with humanitarian values, and support families and provide a pathway to legal residence and eventual citizenship to hardworking and law abiding immigrants. It must facilitate as well the legal hiring of immigrants on working visas requested by their employers according to the needs of the labor markets. Therefore, legal avenues should be easily available for workers to enter the country interested in hiring them, and their rights and due process should be fully protected for all of them. In fact, with such a system many immigrant workers would be happy to be transient if they were certain that they may enter and leave periodically the hiring country.

On the other hand, illegality cannot be tolerated because governments have a duty to protect their citizens. In the United States, for example, many immigrants obtain false documentation in order to work, get a driver’s license and obtain credit. Identity theft is the ugly aspect of this practice. Social Security numbers are sold to illegal immigrants by counterfeiters. And these numbers often belong to somebody else. Some would use those numbers to pay their taxes, others don’t. One Social Security study indicates that no-match payments come most frequently from agricultural, restaurant and tourist industries. Precisely those industries employing most immigrants. We must be compassionate and understanding, but we all have a primary duty as a society to protect law abiding citizens. Identity theft is one of the worse nightmares anyone might experience. Many people have seen their lives ruined by such practice. In addition, the illegal status provokes many fraudulent acts and credit scams that cannot be tolerated under the false pretense of “humanitarian” grounds.

It is also a fact that many immigrants having an illegal status enter the dark world of drug trafficking, while some others might be terrorists. Last month, some Anthony J. Tracy, a native of Virginia, an Islamic convert, confessed about his dealings with Cuban agents in Africa, to introduce some 268 Muslims from Somalia through the Mexican border, after a short stopover in Havana.

Furthermore, it is not an overstatement that immigrants entering illegally into any country do so in detriment of any others following the legal path. Legal immigrants see their prospects delayed for longer periods, their jobs given to those accepting lower salaries and worse working conditions, and many of their opportunities lost to those brazenly getting ahead of them by illegal means.

Our compassion and even our economic self-interest dictate a fair treatment to all immigrants and proper opportunities to those among them that have something to offer to the countries receiving them. On the other hand, even those immigrants guilty of having committed crimes must be treated with outmost respect for their human rights. That is only to be expected from a law abiding society.

Indeed, it is wrong to promote campaigns to block systematically any kind of laws devised to prevent illegality on immigration practices. On the other hand, it is right to oppose abusive laws. In synthesis, we must be in favor of laws promoting legal immigrants as well as humane treatment to those who have committed illegal acts. But legality is a must in any civilized society to prosper.

It is quite important to insist in one of the most damaging effects of illegal immigration - identity theft. In the noisy immigration debate raging in the United States, there is one voice NOT being heard: the voice of identity theft victims.

Many cases of identity theft result from the activities of organized criminals but we must not disregard the fact that behind many of the nation's millions of undocumented workers are someone else's documents.

Illegal immigrants need a Social Security number to get a decent job in the United States, and they often "borrow" one. Therefore, US citizens and US legal residents are being forced by illegal immigrants to share their identities. Corporate America is aware of this illegal practice but look away just to get a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, corporate America takes advantage of these workers because they do not dare to complain about abusive practices.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans and US residents are thus sharing now their identities with illegal immigrants and don't know it. By not dealing directly with the undocumented worker situation and putting pressure on employers with stiff penalties for their hiring policies, the US government is actually encouraging identity theft.

Every year nearly 9 million people pay their taxes in the US using the wrong Social Security number. Of course, not all of them are illegal immigrants. Some have declared a name that doesn't match the name on file with the Social Security Administration because of a typo, or because a woman changed her name after marriage or divorce and forgot to report it, etc. But a very large majority is estimated to be illegal immigrants filing a tax return knowingly with a "borrowed" Social Security number. That is why many advocates of illegal immigrants argue that they are an asset to the US because they only want to have an "honest" job and "pay their taxes".

The Social Security Administration does nothing on what they call a "no-match" situation. Their only interest is in collecting the money. Since they cannot credit such contributions to anyone, the money is entered in what they call the Earnings Suspense File. As far as 2008 some $500 billion dollars in wages have ended up in that file. Nevertheless, there is a study supporting the high estimate of illegal immigrants included among those 9 million taxpayers. The study found that a very high percentage of no-match payments come from agricultural, restaurant and construction industries.

It is impossible to know how many of the Social Security impostors are undocumented workers, but Utah Assistant Attorney General Rich Hamp said that behind most cases the agency has prosecuted so far, he's found an immigrant using someone else's papers.

Social Security does not tell victims if someone else is using their number. In fact, the extra earnings don't end up in the victim's Social Security statement because they are transferred to the Earnings Suspense File. The worst part of this practice is that if somebody uses your number to get a credit card or car loan, the nation's credit bureaus create a new credit file with the name of the impostor instead of matching the number with you, the legitimate user, and alerting you about the misuse. Victims only find out that something is wrong when there are unpaid taxes or unpaid bills and the IRS and/or debt collectors target the original Social Security holder.

When this happens it is too late for the victim to redress the problem and the nightmare begins.