Using "No-Match" Letters for Immigration Enforcement Hurts All Workers

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2006 proposed its Social Security "No-Match" rule, which presumes that a discrepancy between the W-2 earnings information submitted by an employer and the Social Security Administration's (SSA) records is evidence of that the worker is an illegal immigrant. Unless the employer and employee resolve the discrepancy within about 90 days, the employer must fire the worker, or else face the risk of being prosecuted for violation of the immigration laws and significant penalties.

Last fall, a federal judge enjoined the rule (forbade its implementation) on several grounds, and gave DHS the chance to fix the problems and try again. Last month, DHS stubbornly reissued the same rule, albeit justified by some different arguments. However, the new rule has the same defects as the old rule.

SSA's database contains millions of errors due to name changes, clerical errors, and other causes that have nothing to do with immigration status. Using Social Security No-Match letters as a proxy for identifying illegal immigrants is a fatally flawed approach that will hurt all workers:

• Native-born workers - Over 70% of the millions of errors that could result in a no-match letter are errors in the records of native-born citizens. Moreover, because unscrupulous employers use no-match letters as a pretext to fire workers who complain about worker rights or try to organize, they will provide corporations with a powerful new tool to punish workers who stand up for their rights.
• Legal immigrants - Because employers can avoid the risk of prosecution by firing workers for whom they have received a no-match letter, they will have an incentive to fire anyone who looks or sounds foreign-born. Also, legal immigrants risk being fired if bureaucratic delays, language barriers, and other factors prevent them from being able to resolve a no-match discrepancy by the legal deadline.
• Immigrant Workers - No-match makes it easier for dishonest employers to exploit an already vulnerable workforce. Such can simply ignore no-match letters and then use them later as a excuse to fire workers who try to organize or complain about being cheated out of overtime pay. Or, the employer may just start paying its workers cash under the table so that it doesn't have to file anything with Social Security. Pushing undocumented workers further underground allows employers to drive down the wages and working conditions of all workers, including citizens and legal immigrants.

The bottom line: No-Match will cause thousands of people to be fired on an unverified hunch that no-matches are a proxy for unauthorized employment.