Just read this.

Two federal agencies are refusing to turn over a mountain of evidence that investigators could use to indict the nation's burgeoning workforce of illegal immigrants and the firms that employ them.

Last week, immigration cops trumpeted the arrests of nearly 1,200 illegal workers in a massive sting on a single company, but they admit that they relied on old-fashioned confidential informants and an unsolicited tip to get their investigation going.

It didn't have to be that hard.

Call me crazy, but I thought that federal agencies were supposed to work FOR the American people, not AGAINST them. As always, it seems, if there is a way for the government to hinder, bungle, or just plain ignore the needs of the people, they will find it.

The IRS and the Social Security Administration routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them.

But they keep those facts secret.

D'OH!

One internal study found that a restaurant company had submitted 4,100 duplicate Social Security numbers for workers. Other firms submit inaccurate names or numbers reports for nearly all of their employees. One child's Social Security number was used 742 times by workers in 42 states.

"That's the kind of evidence we want," says Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney in Arizona. He regularly prosecutes unauthorized workers, but says it's hard to prove employers are involved in the crime.

"Anything that suggests they had knowledge . . . is a good starting point. If you see the same Social Security number a thousand times, it's kind of hard for them to argue they didn't know."

Double D'OH!

The IRS wants to protect the privacy of its records because disclosing them might cause companies and employees to stop reporting income and paying taxes - and go underground where exploitation is more certain.

Oh, for cryin' out loud. Not this tired, ridiculous argument again. We can't penalize people for doing something wrong -- it might make them do something wrong!

Puh-leeze.

Getting a job is easy for illegal immigrants.

One Honduran man, who crossed the U.S. border in Texas and settled in Charlotte, N.C., paid $50 for a Social Security card, but the construction company that hired him never asked to see it.

He's grateful. The job has allowed him to buy a home, a computer for his two boys and an aquarium filled with goldfish for the living room.

He's worked for the company for four years and now earns in a day what he made in a week back in Central America.

"I'm happy here," said the man, 37, who asked not to be named for fear he'd get fired and deported. "Over there, we don't have anything. You can't even afford to go to McDonald's."

Many of his fellow workers are illegal, he said. He thinks the company knows.

No shit, no shit and, may I just say NO SHIT!

To work lawfully in the United States, individuals must have valid Social Security numbers or authorization from the Department of Homeland Security.

But the law doesn't require companies to verify that workers give them names and numbers that match Social Security records.

So most companies don't check.

That loophole, created by Congress in 1986, makes it hard to prove whether employers know they're hiring illegal workers.

AAARRRGGGHHH! To quote our good friend, Katie's Dad (in our comments on this post)...

"It is going to take the cleaning crew quite a while clean the mess off the ceiling in my office. Apparently my head has exploded again and I've lost half my grey matter..."

Even with only half my grey matter remaining, I can still determine that the government is screwing the people over to suck up to business interests and hoping we're too dumb, distracted or apathetic to notice and/or care.

And if little ol' me can figure that out running on 50% grey matter, it doesn't say much for the collective grey matter in Washington, now does it?