Coming Crackdown - Do Your Name and Social Security Card Match?

Did you change your name? Did you also do your social security name change?

For years, it’s been no secret that millions of workers in the U.S. labor force have been using Social Security cards that don’t match their names, and the federal government has done little more than send tsk-tsk letters to employers, with no penalty attached.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security is shifting from this lax enforcement posture into draconian overdrive. Giving employers a choice of firing employees with mismatched numbers or paying stiff fines is only one of many new measures in a crackdown that will bring painful consequences.

Homeland Security estimates that of the 250 million wage reports the government receives each year, some 10 percent belong to employees whose numbers do not match their names. The agency is targeting more than seven million illegal workers, many of whom use fake and stolen Social Security cards.

But here’s the rub: The rule will impact millions of legal workers, too. Last year, an estimated 18 million Social Security records had inconsistencies, such as a name not matching a card number or birth date. Yet more than 70 percent of those discrepancies appeared on records of U.S.-born citizens.