Pay Crackdown Nets Immigrants

Thousands of immigrants have been forced to leave their jobs in the last few months, the result of a little-publicized operation by the U.S. government to clean up Social Security records, immigration experts say.

Since early this year, the Social Security Administration has sent letters to more than 800,000 businesses--about one in eight U.S. employers--asking them to clear up cases in which their workers’ names or Social Security numbers do not match the agency’s files. The letters cover about 7 million employees.

Agency officials say they are simply trying to tackle a bookkeeping problem. But the result could be the most dramatic blow in years to undocumented workers on company payrolls.

The crackdown has shown that a huge number of illegal immigrants work “on the books,” providing stolen or made-up Social Security numbers to employers. Now, with those employers being confronted by Social Security, many in turn are confronting their workers; those who can’t fix the problem are often being fired or are leaving.