Quote:

IDs Sold To Illegal Immigrants
(CBS) The United States is currently undergoing the largest wave of immigration in over a century. But what makes this wave like no other is that so much of it is illegal.

There are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States. That equals the population of Ohio. These immigrants are coming for jobs, of course. But to be hired by an American factory, they need documents.

So a black market of identities for sale has sprung up and has spread from the Southwest, where Hispanic immigrants used to settle, to places in the heartland, which will never be the same. Correspondent Bob Simon reports.
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If you ever go out looking for the American heartland, when you get to Schuyler, Neb., you’ll know you’ve found it.

The face of the land is unmistakably the wind-swept Plains of the Midwest. But increasingly, the faces of the people who live here are Hispanic.

Eighty percent of the first graders at Schuyler Grade School are Hispanic. But that wasn't always the case. Back in 1985, there wasn’t a single Hispanic student at this school. Today, Schuyler is moving to a different beat – and that’s fine with Schuyler’s mayor, Dave Reinecke.

"What would you rather have, if you were living here in Schuyler?" asks Reinecke. "Would you rather have growth, or would you wanna pick and choose where they came from?"

This town of 5,000 is home to so many immigrants because of the Cargill Meatpacking Plant on the edge of town. Eighty percent of the plant’s 2,100 workers are Hispanic. But this is not your typical story about making it in America.

Ivan Hernandez and Juan Marino of Mexico have worked at the plant under false identities. They can’t show their faces because they’re in the United States illegally. And, they say, they’re hardly the only ones.

"I think if the immigration services raided any of the meat plants in the area, I think all the plants would be left with practically no workers," says Hernandez, who adds that 40 percent of the workers at the Cargill plant are here illegally.

It's a number that is disputed by Mark Klein, Cargill's public relations officer. "I don’t think it’s possible," says Klein.

"How many would you estimate are what we call ‘illegal immigrants?’" asks Simon.

"I have no reason to suspect that any of them are," says Klein.

To get a job with a company like Cargill, you need papers. 60 Minutes Wednesday sent two staffers - production assistant Ignacio Garcia, and cameraman Ray Bribiesca - to Nebraska to find a man known in Schuyler’s Hispanic community for peddling documents.

Posing as illegal immigrants looking for work at the Cargill plant, Garcia and Bribiesca went undercover and found their man, bar owner Michael Cuba.

Garcia asked how much he’d have to pay for a Social Security card and a birth certificate. Cuba said the price was $1,300 for both. Garcia wanted to know if the Social Security card would be authentic. Cuba said yes. Then, Garcia and Bribiesca told Cuba they’d come back in 48 hours with the money.

Schuyler’s police chief, Lenny Hiltner, knows that stolen identities are being sold around town. How? By the phone calls he gets all the time from angry Americans. "And that ranges from the city of Schuyler to Texas to California," says Hiltner. "Victims that have had their identity stolen, and have found that they’re either wanted in Nebraska...."

"In other words, a guy sitting in a Texas finds out that he’s wanted for a crime in Nebraska, then calls you, realizing that somebody has stolen his identity?" asks Simon.

"Correct," says Hiltner.

But illegal immigrants aren't just flocking to Nebraska. Go to almost any city in America today and you’ll see them hanging out on street corners, waiting for employers to drive by and give them work.

Terry Anderson is an auto mechanic from South Central Los Angeles who found his true calling as the host of a one-issue talk show. The issue of his show is illegal immigration: "There are so many people that are angry about illegal immigration, the lack of enforcement, the numbers, the school system, the lack of entry level and skill jobs for American citizens, and American legal immigrants, that now this subject is just huge."
His show is syndicated nationwide, and every Sunday night, the phone calls pour in from all corners of the country.

"Illegal immigration has been going on for a long time," says Simon. "Why is it such a hot topic now?"

"Because it’s gotten so much worse, so much faster," says Anderson.

And perhaps no state has been affected as much as Arizona. That’s because most illegal immigrants these days cross into America along the Arizona border.

The U.S. Border Patrol says that in 2004, it apprehended 235,000 people trying to cross the border illegally in Cochise County, Ariz. And it’s estimated that for every person who’s caught, four make it across the border. That means that in Cochise County alone, around a million illegal immigrants crossed into the United States last year.

Using high-tech equipment, the border patrol scans the ground day and night. But border patrol agents say they may be fighting a losing battle. The volume is simply overwhelming, and the fence separating Arizona and Mexico is underwhelming in the extreme. In some places, there is an actual wall. But for most of Arizona’s 350-mile border, there is nothing more than a tattered barbed wire fence, cut and clipped every night by people coming across.

"All you need is a pair of wire cutters and you can come through, come through at will," says Jack Ladd, a longtime rancher in Bisbee, Ariz. The border with Mexico runs for 10 miles on his property, and about 100 illegal immigrants cross his ranch every day. Just one step separates you from Mexico and the United States.

"We are the United States of America, free country, land of immigrants. And I don’t know that you wanna put up a wall or a fence around this country -- because that’s not really what we’re about," says John Torres, who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the successor to the INS.

Torres says stopping poor Mexican workers from getting into America is by no means his biggest problem – especially after 9/11: "Do we wanna go out and arrest a kitchen worker, or do we wanna go out and arrest someone who is a visa overstay, who has a HAZMAT driver’s license -- who might actually have access to a nuclear power plant?"

"Does that mean that a Mexican who’s coming in here illegally to go work in a meatpacking plant now has an easier ride than he would have had before 9/11?" asks Simon.

"I wouldn’t say he has an easier ride," says Torres. "I’d say he’s lower on the priority scale."

Even when violators are caught at the border, there is limited room at detention centers, so many are simply set free. They are told they have to report to a court within six months, and given letters to that effect. But more than 90 percent never do.

Last summer, a 60 Minutes Wednesday camera caught two Guatemalans and two Hondurans leaving a detention center with those very letters. After a quick wave goodbye from a border patrol agent, the four proudly displayed their letters, and then proceeded to disappear. They would certainly start looking for work, and they would be most welcome in places like Schuyler.

"What would’ve happened to Schuyler if it had not been for this influx of 'illegal immigrants'?" asks Simon.

"Well, we could’ve been like a lot of other rural communities in Nebraska," says Reinecke. "We could’ve lost half our population, and who knows? We haven’t."

Many American towns have been kept alive by the wave of illegal immigrants. But this has given American businesses little incentive to raise wages on the low end of the scale. And many will tell you that illegal immigrants are only doing the jobs Americans don’t want.

"They are taking jobs that Americans will not take at that wage. Let me give you an example. Janitors in Century City and Beverly Hills, 10 years ago, were all making $11 an hour," says Anderson. "All of those companies got rid of the Americans, broke the union, brought in illegal aliens from Mexico and El Salvador. Paid them five bucks an hour. You gonna tell me those black janitors don’t still want those $11 jobs? Sure they do. They would probably be $15 jobs now. But guess what happened? They weren’t gonna take ‘em at $4 and $5 an hour."
But Ivan Hernandez would, and did. He says companies know exactly who they’re employing and why: "I’m telling you it’s a game. They want us to work because they know that we have no rights here, so they know we’re only going to work and work. They produce a lot while we get miserable wages. And since we have the need, we have no choice."

To get his job at the Cargill meatpacking plant in Schuyler, Hernandez bought the Social Security card of a Californian on the black market. How does he then go about getting a job?

"I memorize the Social Security number, the birth date on the birth certificate and the names of the parents," says Hernandez. "And when they called me for an interview, a friend had already told me what they would ask me and I got the job."

But Cargill’s PR director, Mark Klein, says he doesn’t believe imposters can get jobs since the company checks the Social Security numbers of job applicants with local Social Security offices. And that, he says, is more than the law requires: "I feel very good that the people that are coming here now are legal. That they do have the proper documentation."

But the Social Security Administration told 60 Minutes Wednesday that it’s not set up to establish whether or not more than one person is earning wages on the same Social Security card. Hence, the vendors and buyers.

"Are you saying that you don’t know about this network of document vendors that’s operating in the shadows of your plant?" asks Simon.

"No, I have not heard about it here," says Klein. "I’ve read articles that those rings exist. But, no, I’ve not."

Well, 60 Minutes Wednesday already found one of those rings -- and it was time to go back and complete the transaction. Bribiesca and Garcia, our staffers who had posed as illegal immigrants, returned to see the bar owner who promised to provide the stolen identities needed for employment. Cuba, the bar owner, asked Garcia to go to a back room to seal the deal -- and told him his new name: Ricardo Torres Camacho.

With that name, Cuba told Garcia that he could get a job at the Cargill plant. Garcia handed over $1,300 in cash in exchange for a Social Security card and a birth certificate. He was now a Puerto Rican named Ricardo Torres Camacho.

The Social Security card looked real, and the birth certificate had an official-looking stamp, along with Camacho’s birth date, birthplace and the names of his parents. 60 Minutes Wednesday was reluctant to take Cuba’s word for it, so we flew to Ponce, Puerto Rico, Camacho’s alleged hometown.

After four days and the help of an investigator, 60 Minutes Wednesday found Camacho, who confirmed that all of the information on the Social Security card and the birth certificate was correct. Not only that, Camacho said they were his real documents.

He was somewhat surprised to learn that 60 Minutes Wednesday had bought his papers thousands of miles away in Nebraska.

Camacho has been homeless for the past six months. He sleeps in a filthy abandoned home in the center of town. The story he told us was that he didn’t sell his documents. He lost them.

So now, we have this man, the real Ricardo Torres Camacho. And we have the documents we bought in Nebraska with the name Ricardo Torres Camacho.

But there’s more. There is yet another Ricardo Torres Camacho, an illegal immigrant using the same Social Security number as the real Camacho in Puerto Rico. This Camacho lives and works in Kansas, at a meatpacking plant in Dodge City, run by Cargill Meat Solutions, the same company that told 60 Minutes Wednesday that it doesn’t employ illegal immigrants.

60 Minutes Wednesday went back to Klein at Cargill with this discovery. Klein told us that the Camacho at the Dodge City plant had been working there for four years. But when confronted with the evidence, Klein admitted that Camacho had been using someone else’s identity.

"I'm still confident that we run it very tight," says Klein.

"But in January, you said you were confident that there weren’t illegal immigrants working in your plant," says Simon.

"I was confident that, based on what we’ve been told, that they are legal," says Klein. "And we are going to assume that they’re legal."

Adds Klein: "If they present us with the documents, we can’t look at them and just speculate that because they’re Hispanic or because they don’t speak English that they could be illegal."

According to the letter of the law, Klein is right. An employer is not obliged to prove that a worker is legally in the United States. He just has to make what is called a good faith effort.

So immigrants continue to pour through this loophole into America, where they will be illegal -- and unofficially welcome.

I would've posted a few links to stories of people whose Identities have been stolen by Illegal Immigrants as well but the links are dead. Too keep it short, 1 local man had his identity stolen and the illegal immigrants got a few credit cards and never showed up for jobs so the guy and his wife had to file for bankruptcy and pretty much lost everything they owned except a few personal belongings to the banks because they had there house foreclosed on and the guy has been unable to find a job because of the immigrants bad record with jobs. Now that Illegal Immigrants are stealing Americans identities do you think the government should do more to block the border? Here's a tip: Get a free credit report every year.

I get my credit report monthly.

The guy should have been a LOT more vigilant, true...

Anyhow, Identity theft will become a lot LESS prevalent once biometric identifiers are built into Driver's licenses, SSN (in Canada, SIN) cards, etc. Know why it's a little harder to steal Identity in Canada?

If you register a report of a stolen ID/credit card, the issuer is required to make a report to police, and they then enter it into CPIC... if there are any hits to a stolen ID, the holder's identity must be verified... you need fingerprints to have that done.

I figure that at somepoint, it's going to become part of the licensing requirement with driver's licenses that fingerprint impressions be taken and filed, and your drivers' license indexed with your Social Insurance/Security Number and thereby your credit cards.

Either way, people are going to get paid under the table.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

> THE FACTS THAT ANTI-Immigrant Groups
>
>DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW:
>
>
>
>ü Seven million illegal workers provide Social Security with as much
>as 7 billion a year with subsidies in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns
>= "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />U.S.A. (New York Times,
>2005)
>
>
>
>ü The total net benefit (taxes paid over benefits received) to the
>Social Security system if current levels of immigration remain constant is
>nearly $500 billion for the 1998-2022 period and nearly $2.0 trillion
>through 2072. (People for the American Way,
>http://www.pfaw.org/www.pfaw.org 2005)
>
>
>
>ü Immigrants collectively earn $240 billion a year, pay $90 billion a
>year in taxes, and ONLY claim $5 billion. (PBS, “The New Americans,
>http://www.pbs.org/www.pbs.org)
>
>
>
>ü Without the contribution of immigrant labor, the output of goods and
>services in the U.S. would be at least $1 trillion smaller than it is
>today. (People for the American Way, http://www.pfaw.org/www.pfaw.org 2005)
>
>
>
>ü Immigrants do not increase unemployment among natives. A study by
>economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Stephen Moore (1994) found
>that states with relatively high immigration actually experience low
>unemployment and are likely to open up many job opportunities for natives.
>They demonstrate that immigrants:
>
>
>
>1. Expand the demand for goods and services through their consumption.
>
>2. Contribute to output through the investment of savings they bring
>with them.
>
>3. Have high rates of entrepreneurship, which creates new jobs for
>U.S.4. Fill vital niches in the low and high skilled ends of the labor
>market.
>
>5. Contribute to economies of scale in production and the growth of
>markets.
>
>
>
>ü Overall, immigrants in the United States pay more in taxes every
>year -- $25 billion more -- than they use in government services,
>according to the Urban Institute. A disproportionate amount of taxes paid
>by immigrants, however, flows to the federal government rather than to
>state and local governments
>
>
>
>ü Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress
>that immigration offers a viable solution to the threat that this shortage
>poses to our continuous economic growth and prosperity. Source: The
>Herald-Sun (Durham
>
>ü Undocumented immigrants annually contribute at least $300 billion to
>the U.S. gross national product. Source: “Comprehensive Migration Policy
>Reform in North America: The Key to Sustainable and Equitable Economic
>Integration,” (University of California, Los Angeles), August 29, 2001.
>
>
>
>ü Immigrants paid an estimated $133 billion in direct taxes to
>federal, state and local governments in 1997. The average immigrant pays
>about $80,000 more in taxes than they will receive in local, state and
>federal benefits over his/her lifetime. Source: National Research Council,
>National Academy of Sciences, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic,
>and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, National



Just a thought!!!




" Im 18 more mature than you" - Bortsy!!

That's nice and all but how does that help the people whose Identities been stolen by illegal immigrants?

Hey, How many people's IDs have been stolen by idle-ass americans? Does it really make a difference? Would you rather get screwed by one or the other?



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

GAM (The Kilted One) wrote:Hey, How many people's IDs have been stolen by idle-ass americans? Does it really make a difference? Would you rather get screwed by one or the other?

True but this has the capacity to become a huge problem fast. Sooner or later the government is going to have to initiate a new ID system to kind of curb Identity theft such as this and to keep terrorists from entering and living in the country under stolen Identities.

to gam you know that by getting your credit report so often that it reflect negative on your credit

once you have inquired about your credit you can check it as many times as you want within a month with out it counting twice but it is held against you

and to destiny harley
the biggest problem with illegal immigration is that we dont even know what these people are bringing with them or who they are..... and at the rate that they are coming in do you think that you have a fighting chance of catching the one with a briefcase nuke?????

or how about the guy with a jar of anthrax?

the fact is that the job of the army under law is to protect the nations borders
i don't think they are doing that do you?

the minute men are doing a great job and i need to get around to making a donation to them!!!!

and no matter how mant pros you can find to having people illegally here, it will never out weigh the fact that one day one of them might have a weapon of mass-destruction

@!#$ them if they want a job so bad then they can apply for a green card, or citizenship


ONE NATION, ONE FLAG, ON LANGUAGE






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"Disarters are just another star falling in my yard."

Isn't this how racism starts?


______________________________________________________________

ToBoGgAn wrote:we are gonna take it in the ass and like it, cause thats what america does.

Slo2pt2 (Projekt Unknown?) wrote:One my SON is ADHD N.O.S and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I will nto medicate him he will battle throught this himself and learn to control it.

sinrocker:
Dunno about the US, but Canada has direct inquiries and soft inquiries. Soft inquiries can be done as often as you wish (or as long as you don't irritate someone @ the reporting bureaus), but a 1-3-5-7 year report is considered a direct inquiry, and that you usually get one or two a fiscal quarter.

My credit score is finally quite good... thanks for your concern

Spike: The Incidences you're talking about don't have anything to do with Identity thefts... all 9/11/01 hijackers were on legally issued passports from various countries (the 9/11 commission got the passport information from the Saudi, Yemeni, Oman and UAE embassies). If you're worried about a jar of anthrax, what about those millions of pounds of china white, reefer, and other things that are getting smuggled in without a lot of problems by the Chinese triads and the Columbian/Mexican drug cartels. Again, nothing to do with ID thefts... but there's 3 options, either make America a literal fortress, open the borders completely, or try to allow some ease in the passage of goods and people through the borders... you're going to get smuggling as long as there's a need... when there's a need, people will get whatever they want.. be it jobs or drugs.

The best way to cut down on illegals, is first, don't make it illegal for them to cross the border and make registration mandatory, and second, start registering them individually by print and DNA.

If someone starts whining about costs, the HLSA was slapped together with the spare 120 billion dollars that was doing nothing, and they have ultimately a redundant function, so why not do something useful with it?



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

GAM wrote:The best way to cut down on illegals, is first, don't make it illegal for them to cross the border and make registration mandatory, and second, start registering them individually by print and DNA.

Ummm...did I miss something? Registration IS mandatory. That's what makes them ILLEGAL immigrants. If they register, they are legally here. That is the whole point. I vote for fortress. No, J/K. Something needs to be done to curb the influx though. I have no problem if they come in legally. When they come over illegally and there is no way to track them, no way to find who commited the crimes they commit, THAT'S what I have a problem with.

And, no, I am not saying that all illegal immigrants are criminals, other than being an illegal immigrant, most of them aren't, but it only takes one bad apple.


<BR><A HREF="http://www.cawpin.com">
<IMG HEIGHT=100 SRC="http://www.cawpin.com/images/carpics/thumbs/Jeep_new_04_th.jpg"></A>

I should elaborate, I re-read that and I was kinda scratching my head...

I mean, it shouldn't be possible to turn away illegals for any reason other than criminality or disease, and even disease should allow for a quarrentine process.

You said that most illegals get in and never register, that's because they either need a passport or some other type of gov't issued ID, they need to have a pre-determined place of temprorary residence, and if they intend to work, they have to have a work visa and a sponsor that has filled out the proper paperwork.

Most of them are fleeing Mexico because of sub poverty level living conditions, work conditions and pay, but since the US will not accept refugee claims from Mexico (just like Canada hasn't for conciencous objectors/deserters from the US military), they have to go through the process of landing a job, etc. in the US before they emmigrate.

True, there will always be a few bad apples, but they come over even in the legal streams, and hell, there's more than a few that are homegrown.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

I should also say, that this way, they are no longer illegal immigrants, but they also have the ability to be tracked, and they have a way to be TAXED.

The proposition in California to give illegals Driver's licenses wasn't just a peacenik offering... it was to track them down and make them accountable so senior Magoo that's flunked his driving test 6 times because he's not used to paved roads can actually be held accountable for what he did.

You know what they say, you're not imprisoned by bars.. you're imprisoned by paperwork.



Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.

sinrocker wrote:to gam you know that by getting your credit report so often that it reflect negative on your credit

once you have inquired about your credit you can check it as many times as you want within a month with out it counting twice but it is held against you

and to destiny harley
the biggest problem with illegal immigration is that we dont even know what these people are bringing with them or who they are..... and at the rate that they are coming in do you think that you have a fighting chance of catching the one with a briefcase nuke?????

or how about the guy with a jar of anthrax?

the fact is that the job of the army under law is to protect the nations borders
i don't think they are doing that do you?

the minute men are doing a great job and i need to get around to making a donation to them!!!!

and no matter how mant pros you can find to having people illegally here, it will never out weigh the fact that one day one of them might have a weapon of mass-destruction

@!#$ them if they want a job so bad then they can apply for a green card, or citizenship


ONE NATION, ONE FLAG, ON LANGUAGE[/ B]

then why don't you join up and make a change hero