A consultant for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has conducted a study on the government's program to force employers to fire anyone whose name and Social Security number don't match. While the program is designed to drastically reduce illegal immigration by making it impossible for the illegal immigrants to get jobs, anyone who has had a name change through marriage or divorce, or anyone whose name is misspelled or there's a typo when their name is entered into the system would also get fired. The study estimates that the program will cost employers $1 billion a year and cost legal workers billions in lost wages.
Having spent the last three years trying to get the Social Security system to agree to change my card to match my name, I can clearly see how a lot of legal workers are going to get nailed by this system. The Department of Motor Vehicles refused to renew my drivers license because they got a mismatch letter on me. I ended up reverting to my maiden name, rather than having my application to change my Social Security card to my legal, married name rejected for a fourth time. (Didn't like my birth certificate, didn't like my marriage certificate, Needed to keep my drivers license in their file.....)
How many people will lose their jobs under similar circumstances? How many employers will close their doors because they can't keep workers?
Fortunately, the $1 billion price tag for this "fire for mismatch" program is so high that it triggered a federal law which requires the Department of Homeland Security to do further analysis of the issue before it can implement the law.
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