Exclusive–Buddy Carter Proposes Crackdown on Illegals Stealing Americans’ Social Security Numbers

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Thursday that he will reintroduce his legislation to prevent illegal immigrants from stealing Americans’ Social Security numbers, to protect citizens’ privacy, and to deter illegal immigration.

Congressman Carter revealed to Breitbart News that he will reintroduce his Tax Identity Protection Act, which would direct the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to help protect Americans from illegal immigrants fraudulently using their Social Security numbers.

The Georgia Republican first introduced the legislation last congressional term after the Treasury Inspector General found that over one million illegal immigrants were abusing Americans’ Social Security numbers. Carter asked the IRS to address this problem, to which the federal agency said there was not much they could do.

“You know what we found last year is that the Treasury Department’s Inspector General had said that there were 1.4 million illegal immigrants that could possibly be using legal citizens’ Social Security numbers and using them illegally. Well, we brought it to the attention of the IRS and I’ll be quite honest with you: their response was less than stellar,” Carter said. “They, first of all, they did not see any urgency in it. Secondly, their response was, ‘Well we don’t really think we can differentiate from somebody who’s using it and somebody’s who’s not.'”

Congressman Carter also said, given Facebook’s recent privacy violations, that Congress should take action to secure Americans’ privacy surrounding their Social Security numbers.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently fined Facebook $5 billion for privacy violations, which exposed millions of Americans’ data.

“Americans should be protected from this. It’s ridiculous,” Carter said. “The privacy of our citizens’ information, specifically data, has been at the forefront of the news.”

The Georgia Republican said that privacy should garner support from both sides of the aisle.

Rep. Carter said that “protecting the privacy of our citizens and protecting their information, that’s bipartisan. The Democrats should be just as upset about this as Republicans should be.”