They audit food stamps by SSN, why not immigrants?
A reader called in after seeing the results of a state audit on food assistance in Thursday's paper.
The results showed that the incidence of people using Social Security numbers that are invalid, fake or from a dead person are pretty low: less than 200 were found in about 86,000 people receiving benefits from Guilford County's food assistance program. Read the report from the N.C. Office of the State Auditor here.
The caller had a basic question: If North Carolina can audit its food assistance by cross-checking a Social Security number, then why don't they do that to find immigrants working under a phony SSN in the United States?
Complex answer.
Turns out that the Social Security Administration does audit for that. Here's the SSA annual report from Nov. 7 that explains how. The part on immigrants is 10 pages down.
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