Abstract

Making Everyone an Agent

The Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains the only truly comprehensive national database of workers. That database is now being used not as a means for insuring that immigrant workers get the disability and pension benefits to which they've contributed but as an INS enforcement tool. In Operation Vanguard's initial stage, the INS goes through the personnel records of each workplace, checking Social Security numbers for duplications or for numbers that don't exist. This search is an elaboration of an initiative SSA itself has taken over the past few years under INS prodding. Across the country, SSA sends employers lists of workers whose numbers don't match its database. From these "no-match letters," wholesale firings often result, as employers assume those listed are undocumented.