Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Identity-Theft Law in Immigration Cases

ITACadmin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:19:58 +0000

It is not often that the topic of identity theft makes it to the Supreme Court level. Of course, when it is tied into the larger immigration issue, then things seem to get sticky. And, they sure are getting sticky. The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday heard the oral arguments in a case (Flores-Figueroa v. U.S., 08-108) regarding whether or not undocumented immigrants who use phony Social Security numbers to get work should not be considered identity thieves. The big issue is regarding knowing (or not knowing) that the social security numbers that the immigrants are using — some are basically pulled from thin air — belong to actual people.

According to the defense, many undocumented workers commonly buy ID cards from forgers without any intention of invading someone else’s privacy. In addition, the defense argued that there are roughly a billion possible Social Security numbers, only about 400 million of which have been used.

This is certainly a challenging issue. Thus it made it to the Supreme Court level. The bottom line is that by using someone else’s social security number you are commiting a crime. The real issue here is immigration law. If there were different standards for undocumented workers to be more “legit,” then there would be no need to use other people identities. But, again, that is a different issue all together. What do you all think about this?

ITAC Blog » Immigration

Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Identity-Theft Law in Immigration Cases