Texas police are holding Mexican immigrant Rodrigo Rodriguez, after multiple law enforcement agencies tracked him down and a search of his apartment revealed “141 Social Security cards, 110 birth certificates, 18 Texas ID cards, 11 Texas driver’s license, 3 tampered birth certificates, 1 marriage license and 1 Mexico ID card,” according to KRGV.com.
“Police also found tools including a magnifying glass, scalpels, razor blades and erasers,” continued KRGV.com. “They said they believe the tools were used to change information on social security cards. They also found more than $8,000 in cash.”
Rodriguez planned to alter the cards, police said. They’re searching for a second suspect who may have helped Rodriguez burglarize victims’ cars.
Immigrants from countries such as Mexico often engage in rampant, aggressive identity theft. In an exhaustive report, the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) documented how immigrants, particularly “undocumented” illegal aliens, commit multiple felonies while forging documents, tax forms, and stealing Americans’ identities.
For example, CIS estimates 75 percent of illegal aliens use fake Social Security numbers when looking for jobs. Children whose identities are stolen by immigrants enter adulthood with wrecked credit histories. Many are targeted before they are even born. Americans left unemployed by a poor economy saturated with cheap labor from said immigrants are cut off from the system they paid into:
Thus, when illegal aliens use SSNs or other documents belonging to American citizens and legal residents, the damage can be substantial. The true owners risk being saddled with the illegal aliens’ credit, arrest, and medical records. Victims may be denied jobs, unemployment insurance, Social Security payments, and Medicaid benefits. It costs victims hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to undo the damage and recover their names and lives.
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When the economy hits hard times and Americans and legal residents lose their jobs, illegal aliens can continue to work using their stolen identities and fraudulent documents. If an illegal alien who is laid off uses his fraudulent documents to obtain unemployment benefits, this drives up the cost of unemployment insurance. If an illegal alien is using an American’s SSN to obtain unemployment benefits, that citizen will be denied benefits that he or she is legally entitled to.
Predators like Rodriguez dispel the myth that illegal aliens are “undocumented,” or law-abiding. Fortunately, however, identity theft committed by foreigners can be dramatically –and painlessly — reduced almost overnight if those who run the U.S. government decide to enforce immigration laws.
Email Katie at kmchugh@breitbart.com.