By Tim Vandenack, Truth Staff
tvandenack@etruth.com
ELKHART -- At the time, he didn't give it a second thought.
"I was working and my supervisor told me, 'They want to talk to you in the office,'" said Enrique.
Officials at the Goshen factory had conducted a crackdown on illegal workers about a month earlier and he hadn't been detected, so Enrique, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, figured he was safe. Thus, he made his way from the factory floor to the front office, curious but not worried.
Once there, however, a Goshen police officer and an Elkhart County Sheriff's Department deputy confronted him.
"Are you Rolando?" one of them asked, using the moniker Enrique had claimed on taking the job at the company.
"Yes," Enrique answered.
"Are you sure you're Rolando?"
He actually wasn't, but had claimed the name and the real Rolando's U.S. Social Security number, which he had purchased on the black market, to get the job. He finally fessed up -- he didn't match the picture authorities had of Rolando, a Texan wanted on drug charges -- and police continued their search.
That didn't end things with company brass, though.
"On learning of this, my boss ran me off because you can't work with false documents," said Enrique, who came to the United States five years ago and uses part of his earnings to help his wife and three kids back in Mexico. "I was lucky because I could've been locked up. Now I'm working with another name."
Along with the growth of the immigrant population here -- some legal, others not -- comes a proliferation of false documents. It's the scourge of law enforcement and anyone who's had their identity stolen.
"It's a pain," said Lt. Peggy Snider of the Elkhart Police Department, who figures the agency handles two new identity theft or forgery cases involving illegal aliens each week. "It is out of control, totally out of control."
But for illegal workers, false documents are their lifeline to work. More broadly, such paperwork helps fill out the rosters of some businesses and nudges the economy, at least if you consider the Pew Hispanic Center's estimate that some 7.2 million workers -- nearly 5 percent of the U.S. work force -- are undocumented.
To be sure, illegal workers are anathema to most companies. Officials at Cequent Towing Products say there hasn't been a case of an undocumented worker there for at least a year, thanks in part to signage in the company's lobby advising illegals that the firm won't hire them.
If a worker is legal and qualified, "we want you to work for us," said Juan Cruz, human resources director at the Goshen towing equipment manufacturer. "If not, we are not a safe haven for people who do not have the right to work."
But as shown by the case of Janco Industries in Mishawaka, where 36 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested last March on administrative charges of violating federal immigration law, such workers can slip through the cracks. Then there's the case of Enrique -- not his real name -- who spoke on condition of anonymity given his undocumented status.
Enrique said he'll be known at work by one name -- the moniker, perhaps, that's tied to the Social Security number he's using -- and at home among friends by his real name.
Co-workers from his Goshen job would see him on the street "and say, 'What's going on Rolando?" said Enrique, who on this day is sporting a red Indiana University sweatshirt. "You get used to it. We all know how the situation is."
Karen Seaman, human resources director at Heartland Recreational Vehicles in Elkhart, said despite the company's best efforts, they've learned of two undocumented workers in their ranks in recent months. "A lot of times they're using their uncle's or their brother's (Social Security number) or they have one of someone they know," she said.
'You feel a little guilty'
Though quantifying the number of false documents out there is wrought with difficulty, it's no big mystery how the clandestine system works.
The key documents employers seek to prove a would-be employee's legal status and eligibility to work are things like Social Security cards, driver's licenses and "green cards," issued to foreign nationals with legal U.S. residency.
Someone with such documents will sometimes swap or lend the paperwork to undocumented relatives to assist them in their efforts to get work. Alternatively, false copies can be had from black marketeers who use state-of-the-art printing equipment and legitimate Social Security numbers and names sometimes stolen from their rightful owners. Enrique once got a green card and a Social Security card for $250 from a co-worker who had a small document mill.
Employers frequently are none the wiser.
If a check with the feds reveals that the name claimed by an undocumented worker doesn't correspond with the Social Security number he or she submits, that's a red flag right there. "If it's bad, (employers) say there's no work or your Social Security number doesn't work," said Enrique.
However, if a check with authorities shows that a name and Social Security number correspond to one another, even if they don't belong to the person claiming them, no warning lights will necessarily go off. That's a loophole authorities are trying to eliminate.
Seaman remembers once getting a Social Security card from an employee that looked questionable, like it had been filled out on a typewriter at home. However, the name claimed with the number checked out and, by law, she could be accused of discrimination if she challenged the documentation too rigorously.
"If the name and the Social Security number match, then there's nothing else we can do to check it out," she said.
Those whose names and numbers are used clandestinely may later get unexpected notices from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service demanding payment of taxes on wages earned by the illegal alien claiming the data as his or her own. That's when investigators like Snider of the Elkhart Police Department get in on the act, trying to track down the suspect users at their worksites.
"Sometimes they'll be there, sometimes they'll have moved on to another job or another identity," she said. "Illegal immigration causes law enforcement so many problems."
Stephen Bowers, judge in Elkhart County Superior Court 2, regularly handles the criminal forgery and identity theft cases that arise from illegal use of identity documents here by immigrants, typically on a weekly basis.
Usually, the suspects don't have any other crimes on their record, except, perhaps, for traffic infractions, posing "an interesting challenge" for the court, he said. "They're not people who are focused on a criminal lifestyle."
Accordingly, he frequently sentences those found guilty to just enough jail time to give federal officials the chance to round them up and deport them. "I think it's an immigration question more than anything," Bowers said.
Enrique, who's hardly alone in manipulating the system, feels a bit uncomfortable about what he does. However, necessity -- his wife and two of his kids need money for medicine, he's building a home in Mexico, he wants a better life -- dictates his actions.
Moreover, he contends that whatever their migratory status, the U.S. economy needs workers like him to do jobs no one else wants to do.
"It's bad what you do," he said. "But if you don't do it, you can't get work. ... Yes, you feel a little guilty."