Immigration has long been a major third rail of American politics, taking second place historically only to race—“third rail” defined as an issue that is so charged and untouchable that any politician who gets near it will suffer political death by metaphorical electrocution. It is still that, and it’s getting worse. Just as Donald Trump was a symptom of deep political and cultural derangement before he became President—and only at that point constituted a new, contributing cause of that derangement—so the inability to devise a rational and consensual immigration policy has been first a symptom of political dysfunction and subsequently an additional cause of that dysfunction. In our day that dysfunction is defined more or less as the intersection between the wide disagreement over immigration reform and a galloping ideological polarization whose causes are several.

The immigration issue has now become the poster child from hell, the condensation symbol most likely to spark incivility, ideological stupidity, and judgments that one’s adversaries are not merely wrong but evil. The tone of discourse over immigration reminds any historically tutored person of the absolutist, abstract, and angry moralistic language of the 1850s, when slavery took pride of place as the neuralgic issue of the day. That is not a propitious comparison as the third rail becomes hotter than ever.

To get a sense of how hot, note that the last time any Administration made a serious effort to broker a compromise over immigration was back in January 2007, when the Bush Administration put forth what in retrospect was a workable and sensible plan. The plan basically (I’m simplifying here for the sake of brevity) provided a glidepath to citizenship for non-felonious illegal aliens who wanted it, limited guest worker status for those who did not, and better border security to create disincentives to further illegal entry. On the one hand, this was a politically brave initiative, marking the only time during his presidency that George W. Bush pushed against his own domestic political base. At the time, it stood a chance if only the politics could be skillfully managed. On the other hand, as it happened, the politics of managing the initiative was so mishandled that it allowed Bush’s own Republican Party to sabotage the effort from within its legislative delegation.^[1]

It was not that much later that I received my first robocall from Newt Gingrich, with a deep, dark message about immigration tied to Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations.^[2] It did not reach Trumpian “carnage”-level rhetoric, but it got close. When the Bush attempt failed, it seems, the nativists were buoyed as the Tea Party settled into Capitol Hill—and they have not stopped since. That, in turn has triggered leftward motion in Democratic Party views, which is typical of the dialectic of a polarized politics.

One result is that the range of options on immigration reform has shrunk, squeezing out most of what still remained in 2007 of a sensible middle—and, as with many issues, this is despite the fact that the great middle of American opinion, no longer represented by either major party, does not favor any radical view, but rather a sensible centrist compromise. On the one side we have support for “open borders.” That is why, for example, the Federal government spent something like $27 billion in FY 2017 supporting “sanctuary” cities whose main aim was to help illegals escape any detection or penalty for the U.S. laws they had broken. That is also how, in one California town—Huntington Park, in Los Angeles County—illegals ended up serving on a town advisory council, and getting paid for it.^[3] What can one say of a legal arrangement in which self-contradiction has become the norm, except that it is a disgraceful and irresponsible reproach to the rule of law itself?

And on the other side, of course, we have the Trump Administration and the President’s talk of “carnage,” which he blames on Hispanics illegal and legal alike, for all one can tell. When he does this his body language reminds one eerily of Mussolini; but hardly anyone seems to notice, or care. His depredations are so grinding on the collective national psyche that when he said the other day that he should have fired James Comey when he won the Republican nomination, it seemed to require too much energy for most to point out the sheer lunacy of the remark. Apparently, Trump’s delusions of adequacy have now acquired a timeless dimension, and far too many Americans now share that fantasy zone with him.

The informal compromise between these two insane extremes on immigration, which both Democratic and Republican administrations have settled on but applied in different ways and with different tonalities, is to deport illegals guilty of serious crimes, but to otherwise look the other way for lack of resources or will to do more. This is not a tolerable solution for the long run. A tolerable compromise, however, would be to liberalize but also rationalize immigration along the lines of economic need, not family reunification or other “soft” factors. In short, let more of the right people in legally so as to gain support for keeping or getting more of the wrong people out, also legally. But how do we get there? Can anything be done to free immigration policy reform from its lockbox, and make a sensible bipartisan compromise possible?

Probably not, but there is at least one underplayed issue whose better articulation could help: the link between illegal immigration and identity theft fraud.

It would be nice to have some reliable data on this link, but they are hard to come by. We do know, sort of, that, according to a 2017 CNBC report, “Some 15.4 million consumers were victims of identity theft or fraud last year, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. That’s up 16 percent from 2015, and the highest figure recorded since the firm began tracking fraud instances in 2004. . . . In all, thieves stole $16 billion, the report found—nearly $1 billion more than in 2015.”

Those are big numbers: 15.4 million Americans, and $16 billion. And as the ease and knack for electronic techniques in theft increase, the numbers seem to be increasing more or less in tandem—not a good sign. But these numbers hide as much as they reveal; in particular, they do not tell us what percentage of identity theft is caused by illegal immigrants in situ. Robocall frauds originate from many places outside the United States, for example; we don’t know what percentage of these totals match which class and type of fraudsters.

If the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission (which is the designated repository for reporting identity theft fraud, and on which the Javelin study depended), ICE/Treasury, DHS, the IRS, or some other Federal agency keeps data on this, it’s either not obvious or not publicly available (think of the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Even the aforementioned estimate of how much identity theft fraud costs the economy in a given year is incomplete even if it is accurate; it does not include large indirect costs in otherwise unnecessary specialized insurance premiums paid by individuals and businesses or time lost trying to recover from an identity theft attack. So what other numbers do we have that may be more relevant to the question at hand?

Well, to start, between 2011 and 2016, the IRS documented more than 1.3 million cases of identity theft by people who had been given Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). An ITIN, created by IRS fiat in 1996, is a “tax processing number only available for certain nonresident and resident aliens, their spouses, and dependents who cannot get a Social Security Number.^[4] The IRS claims that ITINs do not create legal residency status or work authorization on an I-9 form. But thanks to what amounts to an the effort to get illegals to pay taxes, the ITIN can be used to claim the Child Tax Credit, to get a driver’s license, to open an interest-bearing checking account, and more besides. An ITIN also provides, somewhat ironically it will seem to many readers, proof of residency in the United States in case an illegal applies for legal status at some point.

Because the IRS wants to tax them, those with no legal status in the United States can fairly easily get an ITIN, just by filling out a W-7 form—essentially end-running the main purpose of a 1986 law that required legal residency in order to get a job. The applicant does not have to appear in person before any government official, and need submit only any one of 13 documents approved for the purpose; the document(s) are returned with the ITIN after 60 days. The IRS does not ask about legal status, and the law concerning the privacy of all IRS functions has been interpreted (by the IRS) to prohibit it from sharing any information about ITIN applicants with immigration officials or law enforcement. By August 2012, the IRS had assigned 21 million ITINs to taxpayers and their dependents­—a number that far exceeds conventional estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States. By now the number is certainly larger, but it is impossible to find in public sources. It is so easy to get an ITIN that it’s not unreasonable to conclude that every illegal alien in the United States who wants an ITIN has one.

Of course, if any one of 13 documents will do, those most easily forged will be the documents of preference for illegal residents to get an ITIN. Why use a forged document? Because many illegal aliens have no documents at all, and some are forethoughtful enough not to use their real name to get one. That enables individuals to hide past indebtedness and criminal convictions in their country of origin, and also in the United States. So some again unknown number of illegal immigrants secure multiple ITINs to cover their own tracks and then sell those ITINs to newcomers, who simply adopt the fictitious name on the document invented by the earlier arrival.

Many illegal immigrants are content with an ITIN number, but ITINs are limited; they are not much good for credit applications, for example. So, unsurprisingly, a major document-forging industry has arisen in the wake of the 1986 law not just for the purpose of helping illegals get ITINs, but for a good deal more than that—for stealing the identity of U.S. citizens. Good luck, IRS, taxing all that hard work.

The problem was detected and made publicly known at least by 2002, when the Immigration and Naturalization Service reported that, “large-scale counterfeiting has made fraudulent employment eligibility documents (e.g., Social Security cards) widely available.” The report also describes an incident in 1998 where “INS seized more than 24,000 counterfeit Social Security cards in Los Angeles after undercover agents purchased 10,000 counterfeit INS permanent resident cards from a counterfeit document ring.”

It is not hard to understand why this happens. Once in the United States, illegal immigrants use counterfeit documents to secure jobs that would otherwise be kept out of reach by the employee verification process. That works for many who are content with an ITIN, but also for those illegals who want better documents for the purpose of, for example, appropriating someone else’s credit to buy or lease cars and acquire auto insurance. Some use it to claim Social Security benefits that are not theirs, and some succeed. This requires actual identity theft: the trifecta of name, social security number, and birthdate. Addresses and telephone numbers are easy to add to make a stolen identity package.

In the vast market for forged documents, the new illegal does not have to search hard for them. The purveyors of fakes find him most of the time, usually via friends and inward-rippling family connections. Almost every new illegal has at least one relative or friend in the United States who is an older illegal, and so knows the ropes.

In order of popularity as of about 15 years ago, forged documents included: border crossing cards, alien registration cards, non-immigrant visas, U.S. and foreign passports, reentry permit documents and immigrant visas as well. But forged Social Security cards and driver’s licenses are really the gold standard of forgery. Typically, too, some illegals who came earlier go into the phishing and forging business to exploit more recent illegals. They steal identity packages—combinations of names, social security numbers, addresses, birthdates, credit card numbers and the like—and build a store of stolen identities to sell to newcomers. Several cases of older illegals pretending to be bilingual immigration lawyers in order to fleece newcomers have also been uncovered, and there is a strong correlation between states with large immigrant populations (legal and illegal) and incidents of identity theft fraud. Often enough, legal residents with Hispanic names are reportedly targets of choice.

It is very hard to establish any reliable statistical relationship between the acquisition by illegal aliens of ITINS or more “advanced” forged documents and cases of identity theft fraud. That is because there are many cases amid the mix of identity loans. In other words, a family member already in the United States, and perhaps a legal resident, will lend their documents to an illegal alien who assumes their name. The immigrant’s own supervisor often arranges the loan: The immigrant gets to work and the supervisor gets an inexpensive and beholden worker in what is essentially, sort of, a win-win trade. The result is that the illegal alien can get a job posing as somebody else in their family, but the money earned will go on the docket of the holder of the document, thus increasing their investment in the Social Security trust fund. Identity loaning is still fraud technically, but it is consensual fraud. Only the government and the integrity of the law get screwed.

There is a particular emphasis on borrowing legal residency documents for minor children, for obvious reasons. Parents care deeply about their children’s futures, and the older a fraud the harder to uncover. These immigrants, legal and otherwise, like the millions of immigrants who came before, typically think in terms of family security and wealth and adopt family strategies for the purpose. Trying to understand how this works on the basis of individual rationality is tempting for many Americans, but it doesn’t work most of the time. That’s how far most Americans have drifted from the natural communal agency of premodern social structures, so far that their imaginations cannot readily capture it.

One result of all this is that huge numbers of people living in United States work under a name that is not their given name. Of course this is nothing new. My family’s paternal name in the old country was Bawierzansky. It got turned into Garfinkle thanks to my paternal grandfather’s half-brother Benjamin, who preceded him from the Polish territories of the Russian Empire to the United States. No one knows where my great uncle Benjamin got this name, but it was common in those days to travel away from Russia on forged, stolen, or borrowed documents—anything that worked to escape impressment in the Czar’s army. The documents of someone who was deceased were particularly desirable, for obvious reasons. The result was that forged documents of foreign origin often left a trail of disingenuity once the traveler got to the United States. Was my great uncle Benjamin going to tell an American immigration official the true story of how he obtained his travel documents, a story that would have had to be told in a language he could not yet speak, and the truth of which might well have barred his entry? You get the point, and it remains a contemporary point. Besides, the disingenuity in time gets naturalized: By the time I was born, the name Bawierzansky had long since disappeared from the family record. I was amused to learn some 55 years later, however, that I had cousins by that name living in Australia!

Because of the complication of loaned versus stolen documents, it is impossible to say how many incidents of identity theft fraud there have been. A number like 1.3 million might be high, or, depending on how the Javelin numbers parsed down if parsed down they could be, it might be very low. We just don’t know.

But it’s far from zero. One estimate by the Social Security Administration found, for example, that 700,000 unauthorized workers in 2010 alone obtained fraudulent birth certificates in order to get a Social Security number. It also found that “1.8 million other immigrants worked and used an SSN that did not match their name in 2010.” That’s just for one year. Go back to the time of the 1986 law that made legal residency a condition of getting a job, do a little math, accounting for repeat cases of the same person pretending to be someone they are not year after year, and the scope of estimation grows wide. All we can say about the link is that it is not minor, and the costs all tolled up are not minor either.

And then, of course, there is logic: Who more needs to steal an identity than someone who doesn’t have a legal one in the United States?

Another way to go about plumbing the quandary is to ask not how many people perpetrate identity theft fraud, but how many report being victims of it. As noted above, the FTC is the reporting repository for the purpose. (The FBI doesn’t “do” identity theft fraud. . . .) But if you ask FTC officials how many reports they have received, they either don’t know or won’t tell you. Probably the former. If you make a report but don’t update it at least every 60 days, it expires. So does the FTC even know how many reports have been filed? Probably not. Moreover, many victims of identity theft fraud don’t bother to report it to the FTC, since the FTC does nothing much to help. It gives the victim a “recovery plan,” but it is all common sense and nothing that can’t be easily looked up on the internet.

Hundreds of thousands of police reports, local and state, are also filed yearly due to identity theft fraud, because victims whose credit has been abducted or whose Social Security benefits have been claimed tend to take the crime seriously. They actually expect law enforcement to use their tax dollars to do something about it on their behalf. But anyone who becomes a victim will soon learn that law enforcement does no such thing.

If you ask the local police in any jurisdiction with large numbers of non-native born people, they will tell you that the number of cases coming their way is simply overwhelming. They do not have nearly enough detectives to pursue every report, or even one in a hundred reports. Besides, most of the cases spill over jurisdictional boundaries. If a resident of Montgomery County, Maryland becomes a victim of identity theft fraud, the perpetrator may not, and probably does not, also live in Montgomery County. And if the perpetrator has not succeeded in stealing something monetary from the victim, all the police have to go on is an attempted identity theft fraud by someone they have close to no information about. If the victim goes to the Maryland State police, all he gets is a barely sympathetic yawn. If the victim by chance finds out where the perpetrator is probably located, and calls law enforcement both local and state in that locale to ask for help, pretty much the same thing happens.

This means that there is basically no penalty or disincentive for illegal aliens to steal someone’s identity and then proceed to try to use it, over and over and over again, until perhaps they succeed. In my own case, someone out there, having stolen my identity, first tried to divert an IRS refund. Then he tried to use my credit to buy a car, and succeeded—through it did not harm me. Then he tried to buy or lease another car, and failed, because the car dealerships had the presence of mind to call me to check out the suspect. At one point he used my credit and my name to get auto insurance, and that succeeded. But again, it did not cost me anything. Then probably the same perpetrator applied for my Social Security benefits, and was denied not once but thrice.

I am fortunate in that no real harm has been done, except of course that I have had to spend time, which has now accumulated into many dozens of hours, dealing with the problem and trying to protect myself from further assaults—freezing access to my credit reports, buying special insurance, adding layers of protection for credit cards, and so forth. The guy is still out there, and I have no idea what he will try next. I have a copy of his fake Maryland driver’s license, with his photo, thanks to a sharp auto salesman in Orlando, Florida. (Yes, he looks very Hispanic.) I alerted the Maryland DMV about the fake driver’s license. They said thank you, and beyond that, as far as I know, did absolutely nothing. The most annoying thing about all this is that when I found out about the auto insurance policy, quite by accident upon receiving correspondence from the company, I immediately explained the situation and cancelled the policy. But it took four letters and four more calls to get the bills to stop coming—during which time my account was turned over to a collection agency despite three promises that it would not be.

This sort of Kafka-lite thing is certainly annoying, but it is relatively innocuous. Some people have not been so lucky. Several cases have been reported of individuals being denied credit for a mortgage because of bad debts run up by an imposter. Imagine walking into a loan office at a bank to apply for a mortgage and being confronted by a credit sheet listing a dozen delinquent accounts you’ve never heard of. That is bound to be really law annoying. But that really happens, and illegal aliens are responsible for some unknown but logically not small number of cases.

What is truly if generally annoying, as already noted, is that there is no disincentive whatsoever for illegal aliens to pose as citizens or legal residents to try to steal. Law enforcement at all levels does essentially nothing. The FTC and other Federal agencies do even less. The IRS is actually complicit in this, as we have seen, and to a much lesser extent so is the bureaucratic laxity of the Social Security Administration bureaucracy. And this is why, to victims of identity theft fraud, the fact that the Federal government spent $27 billion last year to help illegal immigrants stay in the country is so frustrating, since some small but not trivial number of those illegal immigrants are the identity theft fraudsters. It is hard for a victim of identity theft fraud to resist asking why some members of Congress seem to care more about them than they care about me and my fellow citizen victims.

I wish I knew how many victims of identity theft fraud perpetrated by illegal immigrants there are. I wish I had a list and could help organize the group to make representation to government. I can’t because government itself lacks the data I would need. But around the issue of identity theft fraud there may be a constituency of both individual victims, defrauded businesses, and politicians who get hammered on by constituents to base an effort at reform on a problem that has received too little attention. It is an issue that appeals to the near universal sense of basic fairness, not to those relative few possessed by ideological extremism. It is an issue that affects people of virtually every socioeconomic cohort. It also affects law-abiding citizens and legal residents of Hispanic background, who of all people should want to put a stop to this sort of thing. After all, they are preeminent victims, and the whole thing makes their community look bad in the eyes of the Anglo majority.

Are there any politicians out there, at any level, who care about this? Are there any members of the mainstream media willing to spend a few hours finding out? These are questions that would benefit from a few answers. Meanwhile, every victim of identity theft fraud, individuals and businesses alike, should be demanding answers from their local and state representatives. We need to find a new and more centrist base for immigration reform, and focusing down on identity theft fraud may be part of the mix that ultimately will do the trick. If we don’t find or develop a new centrist base, it’s hard to see how this problem ever gets solved, or the political toxins to which it gives rise ever abate.