Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Immigration laws get dose of sanity

Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Immigration laws get dose of sanity
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
May 6, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1559899,CST-EDT-edit06b.article


Our nation's Alice in Wonderland immigration laws were fed a dose of sanity Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that illegal workers can be charged with identity theft only when they actually intend to steal somebody's identity.
Now if only the Obama administration and Congress would take on the daunting task of sensible and humane immigration reform. Maybe all the silliness would go away.

The high court shot down a Mad Hatter approach to law enforcement that works like this:

Illegal immigrants obviously don't have valid Social Security numbers, so they often make one up when applying for a job. They just want to work.

But if by chance that made-up Social Security number happens to belong to a real person, federal prosecutors routinely threaten to charge the illegal worker with "aggravated identity theft," a crime punishable by two extra years in prison.

The feds use the threat to persuade illegal workers to plead guilty to lesser charges of document fraud.

The Alice in Wonderland part, of course, is that everybody knows there is no intentional identity theft here -- nobody is trying to crack into another person's bank account or computer. Somebody's just looking for work.

And that is what the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision: Identity theft is identity theft only when somebody is really trying to steal somebody else's identity, and let's not pretend otherwise.