• A close review of some employment laws in the United States suggests that the country gives illegal immigrants de facto permission to work. If an immigrant can get into the country and find a reasonable facsimile of a green card and a Social Security card, that person can get a job. Employers who hire them can avoid prosecution by simply following the procedures set forth in the laws.
  
  

I-9 Form Law

• After an employer awards an immigrant a job, federal law requires the employer and employee to fill out an I-9 Verification of Eligibility Form. The employee fills in personal information and signs it to attest to his or her eligibility to work legally. The employer inspects the employee's documents and, according to the instructions printed on the form, attests that they "appear to be genuine." The employer does not have to photocopy the documents, but may if he or she chooses. The heading of the form states that "Employers CANNOT specify which document(s) they can accept from an employee." Nor can an employer ask to see documents before offering the job. However if the employer has a properly executed I-9 form on file, he or she can not be prosecuted if the immigrant turns out to be in the country illegally.
  
  

E-Verify Law

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in partnership with the Social Security Administration (SSA), operates a database called E-Verify. Employers may sign up to use this system to verify the documents of people they hire. However once an employer signs up, they cannot use the system as a filter to decide who they hire, nor can they use it to check the status of persons they previously hired. They must use it from then on only to verify the eligibility of all new employees. They cannot use the system to arbitrarily check the status of anyone they choose. DHS requires federal contractors to use E-Verify, along with a few states. But for general purposes, E-Verify remains optional.
  
  

Social Security "No Match" Law

• In the process of withholding taxes, an employer must send an employee's Social Security information to the SSA. If the employee has used a fake Social Security card or number, the SSA sends "No Match" letters to both the employer and the employee, informing them that the information does not match. However the SSA has "no enforcement authority." Also, according to SSA's information on "No Match" letters, "This information is considered tax information protected under section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC)" and therefore SSA cannot share this information with other government agencies. According to that same source, "The new DHS regulation does not address these letters."