Salt Lake City police study understates illegal alien identity theft

Did Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank cook the books on illegal alien identity theft?

That is what some people are asking after reviewing a study commissioned by Chief Burbank.

By relying uniquely on Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) crime statistics, the study significantly understates the actual rate of illegal alien driven, employment-related identity theft because under Chief Burbank, the SLCPD does not aggressively pursue illegal alien crimes, including identity fraud.

As reported in the New York Times, a senior Social Security Administration official estimates that 75% of all illegal aliens have fraudulent Social Security numbers which is a felony.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) statistics show that states with the most illegal immigration also have high levels of job-related identity theft. For example in 2009, 30 percent or all identity theft in Arizona was job-related (as opposed to identity theft motivated simply by profit). In Texas it was 24 percent; in New Mexico, 24 percent; in Colorado, 25 percent; in California, 17 percent; and in Utah 16 percent.

In addition, based on investigations by Utah Workforce Services and the Utah Attorney General’s office, an estimated 50,000 Utah children have their identities being used primarily by illegal aliens to get jobs.

Workforce Services also reported that 1,626 employers were paying wages to salaries of Utah kids under the age of 13 who were on public assistance.

The reason illegal aliens strongly prefer children’s identifying information is because parents do not check their children’s credit histories. Therefore, illegal aliens can use a child’s number for years before anyone realizes that the child is a victim of illegal alien identity theft. 

Under Utah law, which Chief Burbank is sworn to uphold, the use of another person’s identifying data, including the person’s Social Security number, to obtain employment, either knowingly or unknowing, is identity fraud and this is a felony.

And yet, in spite of the high incidence of employment related, child identity theft in Utah, Chief Burbank does not target these criminal activities.

Nor does Chief Burbank or his department undertake outreach activities to reduce the incidence of these crimes.

He does not tell the illegal immigrant community that document fraud and identity theft are serious felonies and he does not warn illegal aliens that they will be arrested for these crimes because under his sanctuary city policy, they won’t.

Therefore, when the study commissioned by Chief Burbank says that arrests for identity theft are actually lower for Latinos than for other groups, it is because the Salt Lake Police Department grants illegal aliens immunity from arrest for document fraud and identity theft. (Note: The study commissioned by Chief Burbank lumps legal and illegal aliens together when it writes that “….Salt Lake City’s immigrant population is predominantly Latino…)

So, when up to three-fourths of Utah’s illegal aliens routinely commit document fraud and/or identity theft, the Salt Lake City Police Department ignores these serious crimes and denies that they even exist.

And then, since there are no SLCPD crime statistics for these crimes, Chief Burbank says that it proves that Latinos do not commit an inordinate amount of identity theft.

Critics of Chief Burbank say that he should spend less time defending illegal aliens against laws that he deems to be prejudicial and more time protecting the 50,000 Utah children who are victims of illegal alien crime.

However, they don’t believe that this will happen on his watch because, as he recently told a Salt Lake Tribune reporter: “When you talk about someone who is sworn to uphold the law, does that mean you uphold a law that is prejudicial or unethical or immoral,” asks Chief Burbank?

Given Chief Burbank’s willingness to ignore laws that he does not approve of, his critics hold virtually no hope that he will do anything to stop illegal aliens from destroying the credit of innocent children, saddling them with arrest records and tax liabilities, ruining their good names, and corrupting their medical records with life threatening consequences.

If Chief Burbank is unwilling to protect Utah children and arrest illegal aliens for felony identity fraud, then his critics suggest that it is time for him to resign.