James Di Napoli, a disabled Iraq War veteran, says illegal immigration has ruined his life.
In 1968, Di Napoli’s father, a former university professor from Mexico, married under false pretenses his mother, a U.S. citizen, while remaining married to another woman in Mexico. When Di Napoli was just two years old, his father stole his original Social Security card, and starting in 1988, his father began to sell Di Napoli’s Social Security number to illegal immigrants, who then used the number to obtain employment and other government benefits.
Di Napoli’s father continued to facilitate the sale of his Social Security card until his death in 2009. Since 1994, Di Napoli says he has faced countless audits from the Internal Revenue Service, which has on numerous occasions investigated Di Napoli because his Social Security number is routinely flagged for unpaid taxes, which have come from illegal aliens using the Social Security number to work.
Di Napoli says the failure of federal and state governments to hold accountable the illegal immigrants using his social security number, as well as the employers who hired them, has cost U.S. taxpayers a whopping $400,000 in fraud and has destroyed his life. Not only has Di Napoli been forced to endure “horrendous” and extensive IRS audits, he also was forced to go into debt while attending Colorado Christian University, because, as he explained in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX), “When I was in school, illegal immigrants from California used my social security number to work, which generated fraudulent income on my Federal Student Aid (FSA) records,” leading to reductions in much-needed financial aid.
“I was only one semester away from graduating with honors with a bachelor’s degree in history from CCU,” Di Napoli wrote in the letter. “This loss of financial aid also caused me to owe thousands of dollars in tuition to the university that I was unable to repay for several years and forced me to take a leave of absence from the university in December 2009. Were it not for the identity theft, I would have been able to graduate promptly and would have been able to pay off my student loans, accordingly.”
Despite numerous attempts by Di Napoli to resolve this problem, he says federal government agencies have continuously failed to fix his file. And as The Daily Caller reported in June, “When Di Napoli’s home state of Colorado asked California to take action against the illegals using his identification in 2013, the California Department of Justice under the leadership of [then-California Attorney General Kamala] Harris, said it was up to local law enforcement.”
Di Napoli says the financial difficulties he faced as a result of the fraud committed against him by people illegally in the United States even led to him briefly becoming homeless, from 2012 to 2013.
Is this how we treat disabled veterans in the United States?
Di Napoli, like the countless others who have been victims of illegal immigration, knows all too well that there remains a rampant disregard for the rule of law in the United States when it comes to immigration. And the reason couldn’t be more obvious: Time after time, politicians favor illegal immigrants and the big businesses who profit from immigrants’ less-costly labor because it helps them win elections.
A recent example is Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, the state’s current lieutenant governor and the former mayor of San Francisco. He’s openly campaigning on a plan to create a universal health care system that would also pay for all health care services for illegal immigrants.
“I did universal health care when I was mayor, fully implemented regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status,” Newsom said in August.
“San Francisco has the only universal plan for undocumented residents in America,” he added. “I am very proud of that.”
Rather than spend money helping to reduce crime, fund education programs, or tackle California’s $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, Newsom would rather pay the health care bills of people who shouldn’t be in the state in the first place.
The problem isn’t only limited to California Democrats, either. After countless promises to enact real border security measures, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly failed to fulfill their commitment—a truly despicable failure, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he’s more than willing to fix America’s border crisis.
Some will say that Americans should gleefully suffer to help illegal immigrants settle in America, that we should learn to live with the numerous problems that open borders create. Such a view isn’t only absurd, it’s highly insulting to the millions of Americans who have been negatively impacted by illegal immigration, including Mr. Di Napoli.
As someone who has many family members who immigrated to this country or whose parents immigrated to America, I understand better than most the value of immigration. And I strongly support establishing an organized, secure, well-thought-out immigration system that recognizes the importance of bringing more people to the United States who truly want to be free and live in peace.
But make no mistake about it: We should not tolerate America’s politicians, whether they be Democrats or Republicans, choosing to prioritize politics over the rights of their own constituents, and it’s a moral outrage that disabled veterans should be allowed to suffer in the name of “helping people.”
Further, it’s worth remembering that many kind, peaceful, hardworking illegal immigrants are themselves victims of the current immigration system, because it’s far easier for some corrupt business owners or criminals to take advantage of immigrants who fear speaking to law enforcement.
It’s up to us to end these inexcusable policies and to demand justice for those forgotten Americans suffering because of open borders. Politicians will only act if they think failing to do so will hurt them at the ballot box, so conservatives need to make it clear that they are done tolerating the current, insane, gutless, heartless, immoral status quo.
Justin Haskins is a writer, research fellow, and the co-founder of StoppingSocialism.com. Haskins is also the author of Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx’s Radical Dream. A digital version of the book is available for free by clicking here.