Illegal Immigration Is NOT A Victimless Crime
They tried hard. They did their best.
But The New York Times failed - miserably - Saturday to tug on our heartstrings for an illegal alien from Guatemala who’s facing prison and deportation.
As if his saga is somehow comparable to that of the American man he victimized.
In “Two Men, One Identity. They Both Paid the Price,” The Times told the story of an honest, hard-working blue collar Minnesotan, Dan Kluver, who coaches baseball and teaches Sunday school and has been the victim of a kafkaesque identity theft for the past 15 years.
If The Times has its way, you’ll not only feel sorry for Mr. Kluver, but you’ll be filled with empathy for the illegal alien who broke American laws and thrust an innocent citizen into a financial nightmare.
Kluver’s ordeal was caused by an illegal alien, Romeo Pérez-Bravo, 42. He who entered the country alone at 16, has a string of DUIs, been deported three times in 2005, 2008 and 2009 and bought fake documents with Kluver’s social security number and other identifying details.
Perez-Bravo, who has four anchor children, has worked at a series of jobs since illegally entering the country. His income from that employment caused the IRS to send the real Dan Kluver bills for thousands of dollars worth of back taxes.
Kluver and his wife are on a payment plan to the government repaying taxes and penalties on money the imposter earned in Missouri.
After years of trying to get the bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration and the IRS to look at his case, a frustrated Kluver finally unraveled the story after a routine traffic stop where he learned his license had been suspended. Thanks to Perez-Bravo.
Seems the fake Dan Kluver had been in an accident in Missouri where a 68-year-old grandfather was killed and his 5-year-old daughter was injured.
Some years the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he’d contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived — this one for $22,000.
They spent the next decade living with the consequences — annual tax audits, budgets that never added up, whispered arguments after the kids went to bed. Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the I.R.S. $150 each month, which he’d done more than 35 times. “I can’t keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere,” he told Kristy…
His (Kluver’s) case was one version of a problem that’s been spreading across the country for years. The government estimates that as many as one million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers — a survival tactic used to pass background checks and get jobs. The numbers are skimmed from data breaches, sold in black markets online for as little as $150 or handed out in border towns by human smugglers. Many numbers connect back to U.S. citizen children, dead people or Puerto Ricans whose numbers circulate easily across the mainland. But thousands of others belong to people like Kluver, Americans whose names and identities are no longer theirs alone.
The Times’ story offers a jaw-dropping example that shows illegal immigration is NOT a victimless crime. If millions of illegals are using stolen identities that means millions of unwitting Americans have doppelgängers out there possibly ruining their credit, driving records and criminal records.
Perez-Bravo was apprehended in April and charged with aggravated identity theft and false representation of a Social Security number. He was released on bail and sent home with an ankle bracelet. His trial is in January and the illegal alien faces a mandatory minimum of two years in prison and deportation.
The Times printed several paragraphs boo-hooing for Perez-Bravo, a hard-working family man.
Normal people, however, look at this illegal alien and see a criminal. And there is no comparison between the criminal and his victim.
One man entered our county illegally, stole someone else’s identity, and when he wasn’t fathering babies or driving drunk, worked at a series of jobs. His activities were not victimless. A law-abiding American man has been struggling with debts and bills due to this foreign lawbreaker.
Just in the last six months Social Security has had reports of 80,000 cases of fraud. This appears to be an epidemic.
News flash for The New York Times: You didn’t tell a tale of two men one identity. You told a horror story involving one decent man and a foreign criminal.
