An IRS publication printed this summer carries an article titled “Information for Employers Paying Wages to Illegal Aliens,” the purpose of which is to provide “a summary of an employer’s responsibility for withholding and reporting of employment taxes on wages paid to illegal aliens.”  “For purposes of this article,” the IRS sagely explains, “an illegal alien is an individual, resident in the United States, who is not a citizen or a lawful permanent resident and who has not been given authorization to work by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly, the Immigration and Naturalization Service).”

“In general,” this useful document continues, employers who pay illegal immigrants wages must withhold income tax and Social Security and Medicare taxes and also pay an amount matching the second two—just as they are required to do in the case of American citizens or lawful permanent residents.  Nonresident and resident-alien workers have a legal obligation to apply for an IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which is available only to people who do not qualify for a Social Security Number and which does not entitle the recipient either to Social Security benefits or Earned Income Tax Credits, nor “create an inference regarding the individual’s immigration status.”

I’m all right, Jack!  Under its system, the IRS takes a healthy cut from the “benefits” of illegal immigration, while illegal immigrants themselves are taxed by forced participation in the Social Security and Medicare programs from which they are ineligible to receive benefits.  This is exploitation, in anyone’s book.  Among the work Americans won’t do, apparently, is the forced labor of contributing to retirement plans that fail to make even a pretense of paying off for them.  Also, of course, it is fraud.

Such a surprise.  As the IRS itself states, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act made all U.S. employers responsible to verify [sic] the employment eligibility and identity of all employees hired to work in the United States after November 6, 1986.  To implement the law, employers are required to complete Employment Eligibility Verification forms . . . for all employees.  Anyone employing an illegal alien without verifying his or her work authorization status is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The United States is supposed to be a law-abiding country, not a banana republic like those from which so many illegal aliens hail.  One naturally presumes her anti-alien laws are being enforced as strictly as, say, her tax-payment and anti-discrimination statutes are.  The IRS, however, seems not to share that presumption nor to expect hundreds of thousands of American employers and several million illegal invaders to share it, either.  In fact, it is signaling them to ignore the law of the land.  Clearly, the left hand of the federal government does not care to know what its other left hand is doing.