The reality of America is that it’s culturally diverse

This summer, the Bush administration and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security proposed a policy to prosecute illegal workers by tracing incorrect Social Security information to the individuals who supplied it.

Under the policy, employers with 10 or more faulty submissions would receive a “no match” letter from the Social Security Administration insisting that they correct any faulty information within 90 days. Employers would have to fire the workers in question or face aggressive prosecution if they failed to comply.

On Oct. 10, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California indefinitely suspended the DHS policy, citing the SSA’s error-laden files. According to Breyer, the policy might have led to “the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers.” He also noted the DHS’s failure to conduct adequate research into the potential effects of the policy prior to implementation. This lack of research was incredibly short-sighted given that SSA receives more than 17 million mismatches annually.

The no-match regulation would have affected an estimated 8 million workers. However, only about 5.1 of the 17.8 million no-match cases handled by the SSA annually come from foreign-born workers, documented or not. In attempting to implement such a policy, the DHS effectively sought to transform private employers into immigration enforcement officials. With this newfound leverage, employers would have been granted the opportunity to exploit various workers, documented and undocumented alike.

If it worked as intended, the policy might have forced an estimated 8 million undocumented workers from legal jobs. Some fired workers might have left the country, but many others would have found alternate employment in the underground economy. And contrary to what many pundits might argue, the policy would not have opened the job market to America’s poor.

According to sociologists Roger Waldinger and Michael I. Lichter, labor markets “appear to be structured by networks that link a particular set of jobs with a distinctive component of the labor supply.” In particular, “employers find immigrants a perfect match for positions that natives decline.” When undocumented workers disappear, industry suffers. For example, The New York Times described one North Carolina slaughterhouse struggling with a doubled turnover rate after immigration crackdowns expelled more than a fifth of its work force.

Industries are not the only economic institutions that depend on undocumented workers to function effectively. The SSA needs immigrants as well. According to historian Aviva Chomsky, the SSA was running a deficit of approximately $7 billion as of 2005. But in that year, it received about the same amount from undocumented workers who supplied false Social Security numbers. Since undocumented workers will never receive Social Security checks, they are essentially keeping the SSA afloat.

Immigration is happening. This policy won’t stop it, nor will it prove economically or socially productive. We can either opt for nativism and exclusion, or embrace the reality: cultural heterogeneity. President Franklin Roosevelt expected the Social Security Act “to give to all, old and young alike, a feeling of security as they look toward old age.” By deliberately mangling this intended purpose, President Bush and the DHS are willfully creating social insecurity.

Sarah Davis & Jake Nudel are students at Bates College and members of the Bates College Immigration Group, which organizes, volunteers and mentors within the local immigrant/refugee community. They live in Lewiston.