How Can I Register Comed Without Ssn

In the city of LaGrange, Georgia, an immigrant from United mexican states lives with his young family unit. He's been living in that location for ten years. He's a homeowner. He doesn't have a green card, so he doesn't have a Social Security number.

Without the Social Security number, the homeowner tin't get utility services in his proper name, fifty-fifty though he has a Mexican passport and an private taxpayer identification number from the Internal Revenue Service. (To protect him, his lawyer does not want to disclose his clearing status.) The metropolis, which is the sole provider of utilities, requires that anyone opening an account have two things: a Social Security number and a government-issued photo ID.

So the immigrant relies on a friend, who opens an business relationship for the man in his own name. In doing so, both men take chances being prosecuted for fraud.

Dozens of cities and counties around the country crave anyone who wants to open a public utility account — lights, gas, water, phone — to provide a Social Security number, government-issued ID or some form of proof they are in the state legally.

For some immigrants this is all simply incommunicable, even if they are in the country legally, leaving them with few options, immigration rights advocates say. They can ask the landlord to open the utility account in the landlord's name, but that can severely limit their housing options. Like the homeowner in LaGrange, they tin can ask a friend or relative with a Social Security number to open up the account and risk prosecution. Or they can movement to another city.

It'south difficult to know exactly how many cities have adopted these policies. A Statelinereview of more than than two dozen city utilities constitute the municipalities that practice require a Social Security number to open an account accept several things in common: They're smaller cities that usually provide all or some of their municipality'southward utilities, and they are primarily located in the South, Arizona and Texas — although at least one urban, Northern urban center, Detroit, requires a Social Security number and government-issued ID to open up a h2o account.

In May, the Georgia NAACP, the National Immigration Law Eye, Project Southward, and other advocacy groups, filed a class action lawsuit against LaGrange alleging that by restricting admission to utilities, the city'southward policies make it "difficult or impossible for some of the City's most economically disadvantaged residents to live in LaGrange," disproportionately harming Latinos and African-Americans. LaGrange also attaches unpaid courtroom fines to residents' utility accounts, a practice that is likewise office of the class action conform. (The immigrant who cannot become utilities in his proper noun is a plaintiff in the adjust, identified as "John Doe#iii.")

In its motion for dismissal of the case, the urban center said that it did not intend for its policies to accept a discriminatory effect and that the mayor and metropolis council adopted "rational and reasonable requirements" intended to "protect the city coffers."

Anyone opening a water business relationship in Augusta, Georgia, needs to provide both picture ID and proof of Social Security number. In Alabama, the metropolis of Dothan requires a state ID to open up a utility business relationship — and to get that identification, a resident must prove he or she is in the country legally and has a Social Security number.

Florence, Alabama, requires a valid driver's license or land ID and a Social Security number to open a utility account in order to get electricity, gas, water and garbage services in the metropolis. A Social Security number likewise is required to go h2o, gas or electricity in Dunlap, Tennessee, a small city in the Sequatchie Valley.

Louisville, Kentucky's water, electric and gas companies require a Social Security number, equally exercise the public utilities in Temple, Texas, a sometime railroad boondocks about an hour exterior of Austin. In Arizona, the city of Gilbert requires a Social Security number as well.

Housing and immigration lawyers say these requirements discriminate against immigrants and violate both the federal Fair Housing Human action and the Privacy Deed of 1974, depriving immigrants of their human rights. In courtroom records, city officials debate they're simply trying to prevent fraud.

"This has huge implications," said Atteeyah Hollie, staff attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based organization that provides legal representation to poor people defendant of crimes, and is 1 of the groups suing the metropolis of LaGrange. "They're making it impossible for [immigrants] to accept basic services then they can live there. The effect is to tell sure immigrants, 'You tin't live here.' "

The LaGrange policies don't discriminate against immigrants, according to Andrew Arthur, a resident young man in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, a research and advancement group for limiting immigration.

"The policies are facially neutral and legitimate because of the interest in the municipality of obtaining payment for the services that information technology provides," Arthur said.

LaGrange Mayor Jim Thornton declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. The city'southward attorney, Jeff Todd, said urban center officials felt strongly that the Social Security requirement was an of import tool to foreclose fraud and had nothing to do with a resident'southward immigration status.

"The plaintiffs legitimately despise the policy choices. They're attempting to make a novel stretch under the Fair Housing Act to make a policy alter," Todd said. "We look forward to demonstrating to the court that the policies are even-handed ordinances."

Right to Water?

An Oct study past the Emory International Law Review establish that in some households in the Us, residents face up the risk of living without electricity or running water because of their clearing status. (One of the report's authors, Azadeh Shahshahani, is the legal and advocacy director for Project S, i of the LaGrange plaintiffs.)

The American Public Ability Association, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group that represents nonprofit, community-owned utilities effectually the country, including in LaGrange, declined to comment for this story. Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, which regulates utility companies in the state, also declined to comment. Other utility groups did not respond to requests for comment.

Justin Cox, an Atlanta attorney with the National Immigration Police force Center, who is also role of the LaGrange lawsuit, said he's represented a number of clients in roughly a dozen Southern cities in Alabama, Georgia, Southward Carolina and Tennessee who couldn't get utilities because they didn't have a Social Security number. He said that every time he called the metropolis and told them they were breaking the law with this requirement, "they always cavern."

"I was playing Whack-A-Mole," Cox said. "Our hope is with this case, we can transport a bulletin to other utility providers, 'if they don't change their policy, they'll exist side by side.' "

In 2011, so-Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signed a sweeping clearing law believed to exist the toughest in the nation.

Many municipal utilities weren't clear whether they could cut off services to residents who couldn't evidence they were in the state legally, said Grace Meng, an immigration attorney and senior researcher with the nonprofit Human Rights Watch. In 2011, Meng wrote a study looking at the affect of the Alabama clearing police.

Her report found that the law encouraged local and state officials to deny immigrants without legal documentation access to water and housing. I adult female in the report left Alabama shortly after the law was passed after her landlord appear that residents would demand a Social Security number in order to go water and electricity.

Meng'southward investigation besides found that some public utilities, including in the cities of Dothan and Decatur, required either authorities-issued ID or a Social Security before the constabulary passed, documentation that is all but impossible for many immigrants. (Both cities nonetheless have those requirements in place.)

Other municipalities appear to be unclear about what federal law requires.

In Calhoun, Georgia, for example, the public utility'south website says that in order to open an business relationship, applicants are required by federal police to provide a Social Security number, citing the Federal Trade Committee'south "Ruddy Flags Rule," intended to preclude identity theft.

Simply when contacted by Stateline, Larry Vickery, the utility's planning director, said that the urban center never had required a Social Security number and merely requires ii forms of identification, including a photo ID such as employee ID and accepts credit cards as documentation. He said he did not know what the Red Flags Rule was.

The Reddish Flags Rule, first implemented by the Federal Trade Commission in 2007 and amended in 2010, requires many businesses and organizations to implement a written identity theft program to detect the alarm signs, or red flags, of possible fraud. But the rule only applies to businesses that defer payment for appurtenances and services or extend credit. And they have to utilise credit reporting agencies to either obtain or study data.

But, said Tiffany George, senior attorney in the FTC'south Partitioning of Privacy and Identity Protection, "the FTC does non accept a requirement of collecting Social Security numbers." She said she was not aware of communities that were dislocated about the rules and did not desire to comment on specific cases.

When contacted again past Stateline, Vickery said that the city of Calhoun was revising its website to be clear that a Social Security number isn't mandatory to open up a utility account and that the urban center would accept other forms of identification, such as a passport — even a Mexican passport, he said.

He said Calhoun is an industrial metropolis with a relatively large immigrant population. "We want to exist accommodating," Vickery said. "We weren't enlightened that we were doing anything wrong."

Stateline is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts that provides daily reporting and assay on trends in country policy.