No Match Rules Coming Back -- Unchanged

While this may be an excellent immigration enforcement technique, the Social Security Administration is not ready for all the calls and visits it will get from U.S. citizens who will inadvertently fall afoul of this plan -- if it comes to pass. From the Associated Press:

The Homeland Security Department on Friday offered a lengthy defense of its proposed program that would force employers to fire workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers, and said it would try again to have the rules enacted into law.

A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the rules in October, saying the proposal would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government hasn't evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in time would lose their jobs, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote.

In a 44-page "supplemental" document released late Friday, the department attempted to address several of the judge's concerns.

Among other things, the document "outlines clear steps an employer may take in response to receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration indicating that an employee's name does not match the Social Security number on file," the department said. If businesses follow the guidance in the No-Match Rule, the department said they will have "safe harbor" from the letter being used against them.

The last line of the 44-page document says the department intends to "repromulgate, without change," the same set of rules the judge blocked in October. ...

Chertoff said the department has also filed an appeal of the October ruling, and is pursuing both tracks - revised rules and the legal appeal - "simultaneously to get a resolution as quickly as possible."