Supreme Court to Review Identity Theft Charges in Undocumented Worker Cases
The Bush administration's recent "get tough" philosophy with regard to undocumented workers (as opposed to its more lenient attitude toward the employers who hire them) might soon require revision. In the past, undocumented workers were deported but usually were not aggressively prosecuted, at least if they had not reentered the country after an earlier deportation. The most recent approach is to charge or threaten to charge identity theft if the worker obtained employment by using another person's name and social security number.
The workers who acquire false documents do not necessarily know whether they are using a real or a fictitious identity. The government insists that it need not prove the worker's knowledge that he or she has misappropriated a real identity. Some courts have agreed with the government while others have held that identity theft requires proof that the worker knew the fraudulent documents contained a real person's information.
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The Supreme Court today agreed to resolve that conflict. If it holds (as it should) that Congress did not intend serious penalties to be imposed upon someone who didn't know that his actions might harm a real person, the government's ability to bring identity theft charges against undocumented workers will be hampered. That would require the Justice Department to rethink its tactics, and perhaps return to a more reasonable approach to the enforcement of immigration law violations.
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