November 09, 2007

Credit Reporting Data Reveals the Number of Illegal Aliens in the U.S.: 17 million

(By the way - I'm seriously jonesing to get back to more frequent blogging. I'm working mega-hours on a business project. In the meantime, this is too good to miss.)

Technology writer Robert X. Cringely has a column this week on the use of credit reporting data to get a fix on the number of illegal aliens in the U.S.:

While politicians and the U.S. Census Bureau may disagree on how many illegal aliens are living in the United States, the big credit reporting agencies have a pretty solid handle on the number and it is 17 million. That's 17 million adults of unproved nationality who have ongoing financial relationships with businesses or - believe it or not - governments. It's likely that there is some duplication in this total number, that is an illegal alien who is counted twice because he has, for example, a different relationship with his electric utility than he does with his phone company. But since the 17 million figure doesn't include children, the two are likely to wash out and 17 million is probably pretty darned close to the real number.

...A lot of this sleuthing comes down to a surprising artifact, the Social Security number. One would think that surprising for an economic class of people best known for not having Social Security numbers. Ah, but they do have Social Security numbers, just not their own. You need a Social Security number to sign up for utility services, for example. No Social Security number, no electricity, gas, phone, or satellite TV. So what's a poor alien to do? They go down to some local hangout and BUY a Social Security number to give to the utility. This has to be a legitimate number or it won't fly with utility computer systems, but does it have to be the customer's own number? Good question.

Here's where we have an interesting business ethics issue. Say you are the electric company and someone tries to set up service using a Social Security number that already exists in your database and is clearly borrowed, bought, stolen, or simply made up. What do you do? Most utilities go ahead and set up the account, because to them what counts is whether the new customer will actually pay that bill and it turns out that people operating on such borrowed numbers are more reliable bill payers than the rest of us. They can't afford to get in trouble with the electric company because that would draw attention to them. So there is a tacit agreement between the parties that a Social Security number must be provided because that's the rule, but if it happens to be someone else's Social Security number, well that's okay.

The funny thing about this is the impact it has to have on the person who was originally assigned that Social Security number by the U.S. government. Rather than hurt their credit it actually helps because there is so much evidence that they are good at paying their bills.

Of course the credit bureau notices something and that's why they are so able to estimate numbers in the first place. They know what Social Security numbers are being overused and can probably even trace the genealogy of that number as it makes its way across the country. Here's an amazing fact: some individual Social Security numbers are in use right now by UP TO 3,000 PEOPLE and it isn't at all unusual for a borrowed number to be used by 200-1,000 people at the same time. Remember that most of these folks AREN'T illegal aliens.

Meanwhile we have an AP report today that plague - the freaking plague disease, that for U.S. citizens has been a thing consigned to the dark ages of history - is making a resurgence:

Health officials in Arizona warned in September that the plague appeared to be on the rise and that more cases were likely after an Apache County woman was infected with the disease.

That case, the first human infection reported in Arizona since 2000, followed the discovery of an outbreak of the disease in prairie dogs in Flagstaff in August.

Arizona health officials have been wary about a plague outbreak because of greater activity in New Mexico and other nearby states in the past year.

A.P. tries to spin this as if plague comes from animals:

Plague is transmitted primarily by fleas and direct contact with infected animals. When the disease causes pneumonia, it can be transmitted from an infected person to a non-infected person by airborne cough droplets.

But if that's the case, why is it coming back now, after being considered a thing of the past within the living memory of today's citizens?

The answer may be in illegal immigrants who avoid health checks as they enter the country. Chris Burgard reports in his excellent film, "Border," that illegal immigrants are entering the country with diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy.

The film is available on DVD. You can read my review of it here.