Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

3/18/03  News Report -- The Boston Globe

A controversial program designed to clear up millions of erroneous Social Security numbers has resulted in a wave of firings all over the country, as companies are told their workers have invalid numbers, sparking fear that some of them may be illegal immigrants.

Sitting on $345 billion in uncredited money paid into the system, the government last year began sending letters to every company in America with at least one employee whose name did not match his or her Social Security number. The plan was intended to clear up misspellings, name changes, and other errors that might cause legitimate employees to drop out of the Social Security database. But the impact has fallen far more heavily on illegal immigrants, many of whom apply for jobs with false numbers.

Kayem Foods, a meat processing plant in Chelsea, received letters last year that identified 51 workers whose Social Security numbers didn't match their names in the federal database. Although most have been corrected, said a Kayem spokesman, several of the workers quit. In January, five were fired after they admitted being illegal immigrants and giving the company falsified Social Security cards, a company spokesman said.

In the Chicago area, more than 100 people, most of them Latin American, were fired from several Target discount stores after the company was sent the names of employees with mismatched numbers. Similar firings took place in San Jose, Los Angeles, and in southern Florida.

Based on information from dozens of immigrant rights groups, the National Immigration Law Center, a policy and advocacy organization, estimates thousands of workers across the country were fired last year after their names appeared on the government's ''no-match'' letters.

''No one objects to the purpose of the program,'' said Josh Bernstein, the center's senior policy analyst. ''The problem is that employers don't understand what it's about. They assume it's for immigration enforcement.''

The government has been sending no-match letters to employers since 1994 in an effort to ensure that workers are properly credited for their Social Security contributions so that when they retire or if they become disabled they are eligible for Social Security grants they paid into the system.

But for most of that time, the letter campaign has targeted only companies with a relatively large number of mismatched Social Security numbers. The threshold was 10 employees, and only if they represented 10 percent or more of the total work force. In 2001, Social Security sent 110,000 such letters to companies.

Last year, however, in an attempt to decrease the growing number of erroneous listings, the agency decided to send letters to every company that had even one employee whose number didn't match. In 2002, federal officials sent out 950,000 letters, many of them to companies that previously had never received such a letter.

Some employers assumed it was part of a post-Sept. 11, 2001, security crackdown. Others viewed it as a way of enforcing immigration law.

''The majority of employers have been both alarmed and confused about what they're supposed to do,'' said Marielena Hincapie, a staff attorney with National Immigration Law Center. ''The reality is employers are caught in a Catch-22. If they don't inquire, they think they may be in violation of immigration law, if they do inquire they are violating labor laws.''

Under federal law, employers may not ask their workers about their immigration status, but they are not supposed to knowingly employ illegal immigrants and can be fined if caught.

In its letter, the Social Security Administration asks employers to respond within 60 days with the corrected information but does not order them to comply. It does state: ''This letter does not imply that you or your employee intentionally provided incorrect information about the employee's name or SSN. It is not a basis, in and of itself, for you to take any adverse action against the employee.''

Hincapie says some employers used the letters as an excuse to get rid of undesirable employees, especially those who have tried to organize unions.

''There are some who received the letter and didn't do anything with them until there is an organizing effort. Then they say, `Oh, Jose, can you come into my office,' '' Hincapie said.

''The motivation is to make sure we give employees credit for putting money into the [Social Security] system,'' said Jean Venable, a spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration. ''The letters do not imply that employers or employees didn't provide correct information. It's not a basis for taking any negative action. If employers do, they could be subject to antidiscrimination or labor law sanctions.''

Scott Farmelant, a spokesman for Kayem Foods, said the company did not fire employees simply because of the no-match letter. He said the workers who were fired voluntarily admitted they were undocumented and keeping them would be a violation of federal immigration law.

''They were terminated because they admitted saying they gave false Social Security numbers,'' Farmelant said. ''We're prohibited by law from hiring anyone who is illegal.''

In Boston, immigration advocates say they've counted more than 300 workers who've been notified that their names and Social Security numbers don't match in a federal computer system. The errors run the gamut of mistyped numbers, names that have changed, and people with phony numbers.

Those firings have spurred organizers in the Boston area to start a ''don't tell'' campaign, notifying workers to admit nothing when letters reveal their Social Security identities are wrong.

''We want our community to know what their rights are,'' said Fernando Lemus, organizer for Local 1445 of the United Food and Commercial Workers. ''Getting a no-match letter has nothing to do with employers enforcing immigration laws.''

Last Saturday, more than 100 people packed Most Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston for an informational forum, put together by a coalition of immigrant rights groups. Many arrived with no-match letters in hand, saying they thought they were the only ones who had received them.

''It's an even bigger issue than we had thought,'' Lemus said.

For all the trouble they have caused in the workplace, the no-match letters apparently did not net the Social Security Administration much new information. The agency decided to cut back on the program this year because it didn't result in a large number of corrected Social Security accounts, said Venable.

''We used a lot of agency resources to handle this, and based on a preliminary analysis, a low number of corrected W-2 [forms] were collected,'' she said.

This year the agency plans to send letters to companies that have 10 workers or more who don't match and who represent at least 0.5 percent of the work force. Venable estimates 135,000 letters will go out in 2003, a fraction of the number sent out last year.