New Workload For SSA?

Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been working on an immigration bill that is expected to receive serious consideration this year. The "guest worker" provisions of the bill have attracted the most attention but the bill would also require employers to check an employee's name and Social Security number against a Social Security database. There are other signs that such a plan is coming. The House Social Security Subcommittee is holding a hearing on this issue of March 2. Social Security is looking for contractors to handle a name and Social Security number database, which it hopes to have available by May or June of this year, even though it is unlikely that it will be mandatory until at least next year.

If it is mandatory that employers check their employees' names and Social Security numbers against this database, Juan Rodriguez cannot work under a Social Security number that he picks at random, if that number belongs to someone not named Juan Rodriguez. The problem is that while there are millions of Juan Rodriguez's working under assumed Social Security numbers, there are tens of millions of Jane Smiths working under the Social Security numbers of Jane Jones, but Jane Smith and Jane Jones are the same person. Jane just never got around to informing Social Security that her name changed when she got married. Straightening out one of these cases is easy enough. Straightening out tens of millions of them in a short time period is a potential nightmare for the Social Security Administration.