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Comment by beaeglebeached | Hacker News Reader

I have a dumb question but how often do tourist visa overstayers get deported while running their own business under an incorporated ITIN? There's not even an I-9 check for non-employee income. There's got to be millions of people doing something like this or as 'independent contractors' considering how trivial it is and the obvious completely broken immigration system that demands these kinds of hacks.

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There may be "millions of people" doing this, but they are running street carts and house cleaning services, not tech companies.

You are wrong. Only from personal experience.

I have an informal waiver from ICE right now, and I'm running a tech business, but I'm deportable and would ordinarily be in immigration jail except I'm in a sanctuary state.

Unless you know of millions of other people in the same situation as you I'm not sure what your anecdote proves?

A single example (what you are calling an anecdote) is all that’s needed to disprove your blanket statement - he provided it.

I don't think it was a blanket statement. He's claiming that the millions of people GP is talking about are doing low-skill work – suggesting that there might be tech workers, too, but that there are less than millions of them.

Why would you live illegally in the US if you run a tech business?

I mean, you can sell tech services to the US market living anywhere legally!..

Please, tell me how to do this. My (SW dev) business so far relies heavily on personal relationships built over long periods of time. I wasn't able to find any other way. I don't have much disposable income for online marketing professionals and ads (I had but it all went to waste).

LinkedIn is great. You'd be surprised how many welcoming people you'll find if you communicate like a real person. But be prepared and don't take personally when someone ignores you or give a bad response. Just move on.

Do extensive research first and make sure there is a real potential that what you offer can be valuable to them. And communicate that. Smaller businesses are much easier to sell to. Startups are even easier, but you have to be sharp, deliver very quickly, and be prepared for a more dynamic environment.

I've sold SWE services as a solopreneur to customers in the US, UK, even Hong Kong. All through direct messages on LinkedIn.

Did you have any issues regarding your timezone? I had some good leads there (and some success too, but always with local people) but the timezone thing killed it every time.

I'm trying to get my immigration status fixed. I was on a green card via a K-1 visa, then I sat in jail for 10 years on false criminal charges waiting for trial. I have since been released and the charges dismissed, but my green card got put into a weird state. There's more to it, but I'm hoping to have my legal status back again by the end of the year.

Is your case public anywhere?

Not currently. The press stories got recently taken down after the court dismissed the charges. I hope to write it all up after my immigration status is fixed.

I imagine you can apply for naturalization straight away if you get your green card issue retroactively fixed.

I'm hoping so. I fucked up because I'd been here way long enough to apply before the issue came up. I was ducking the issue for tax reasons (earning income in the UK and USA at the same time).

Why would you go through the trouble? Most people I worked with in restaurants would just find someone’s name/ssn to use, put they had 10 children, and never ever file taxes.

I think there was a shady underground way to match illegal immigrants with SSNs. Or they just networked heavily in their communities.

I can imagine this being true but at the same time it's so weird. I tried to open an account with Chase and Bank of America and they ask me for SSN, and I can't get one because I am from outside the US (I just want to get one to have my freelance money in an actual bank and not Paypal/Payoneer/an app).

There are companies that provide a LLC with a SSN for just a fix payment of $400, but I am sure it comes with a lot of taxes issues that I don't want to care for now.

So, how can the financial system rely on SSN if they can be sold for inmigrants?

They won't use a Chase account. They'll get paid cash or a physical check they can take to a check cashing place.

Yes but my question was not about how they open a Chase account, but why Chase requires a SSN if SSN are sold in a black market (according to the previous comment)

Chase requires more than just the SSN. Chase requires you to prove your identity matches the person whose SSN you submit. They require it as part of a larger picture, not in isolation.

(Employers are supposed to verify ID too, but they're not scrutinized as heavily as a major bank like Chase.)

Chase uses the SSN to look for a bad banking history.

Why wouldn't they? They'd probably just use the business tin as the taxable account owner and then their real foreign passport as the UBO for KYC. If they can't do that it would surely break the wheels of industry as foreign owned US businesses need US bank accounts.

IIRC banks need a ITIN or SSN + passport or ID of the UBO

Documented immigrants will get a ITIN and/or EIN.

Undocumented immigrants are far more likely to go the... undocumented route.

Undocumented immigrants can get an ITIN, and many do. A lot of the time the ITIN will be used where it's allowed (opening bank accounts) and a counterfeit social security card where it's not (applying for employment).

Wouldn't that, by definition, turn them from undocumented to documented?

I guess in a pedantic manner, but then they were always documented, since their country of origin knew who they are.

In terms of immigration, undocumented typically means you don't currently have a valid visa or residency permit. In that case no, they would still be undocumented, since the ITIN doesn't grant them either.

> There are companies that provide a LLC with a SSN for just a fix payment of $400

This has to be a TIN (Tax Identification Number) not a SSN (Social Security Number). As far as I know SSNs are only issued to people.

Legal immigrants get an SSN. I have an SSN it is just suspended or something. If I try to use it online it causes 500 errors everywhere as whatever status is attached to it isn't handled by any financial site.

BofA happily opens accounts for those with no SSN as long as they show up with somebody who has. And a person with a driver's license and SSN must confirm that the customer resides with them.

Many 'illegal immigrants' also entered legally with a visa that allows them to get a real SSN, like most J1 exchange scholars or students. These cards usually show a line saying not for work except for permission, but there is probably an underground network for faking a normal one.

As an illegal, the biggest problem is.. how would I get ID with matching photo that I can use to sign up for web sites? A huge amount of web sites now want to ID verify with government ID and selfie. I have to get other people to do this for me.

California does not require proof of legal status to get a driving license. I think the license is just eligible in California afterwards. I had one for a while while I was waiting for my visa to be processed.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification....

It's short-sighted nonsense that undocumented immigrants can't get SSNs. They should be issued SSNs and pay taxes as usual. They are working, and the IRS should be collecting taxes, nothing more, nothing less. If they aren't paying taxes, someone else has to make up the difference.

Likewise I want them to get licenses if they can pass the driving laws test, and should be able to get insurance. I don't want to be hit (or hit and run) by an uninsured driver.

They and their kids should be getting the same vaccines someone with a legal right to live here does, under the same terms. This is basic public health that helps everybody.

This is 100% orthogonal to whether ICE should be pursuing and deporting this or that person. They current system makes the rest of us less safe -- and that's not even getting into the massive impingement on the human rights of law abiding folks due to the misincented immigration (and other) laws and their enforcement).

Undocumented immigrants can get an ITIN, and many do use them to pay taxes. The IRS really doesn't care where you got your money from, so long as they get their cut.

Where undocumented immigrants won't be able to file their taxes is if they used a counterfeit SSN to be employed, but even in those cases they pay anyways through standard withholding. Most Americans don't know you can adjust withholding, nevermind undocumented immigrants.

I think its partly about making day to day existence hard enough in the hope that they will self-deport, without making the laws outright inhumane

That may be the case, but it is self-defeating in that it makes things worse for everyone else, as examples in my comment show.

Is the immigration system broken?

Or are there just billions of Indian and Asian people?

There are 750 million Europeans , and maybe 4.5 billion Asians (6 times more in Asia than Europe).

But the wait and difficulty is much more than 6 times if you’re Asian versus if you’re European.

Do you think that might have to do with relative demand, because most Asians would prefer to emigrate elsewhere, and most Europeans would not? If you combine with that the relative population differences, it creates a striking demand curve.

Relative demand is a factor. But a larger factor is that many of the immigration categories that are numerically limited have the same limit for all countries, and India and China have a lot larger population than any of the many countries in Europe.

Now run the same numbers but looking at just visa applications instead of the entire population of these regions.

immigration should be on a country by country basis, not on a population basis.

so if your country has tons of people (for whatever reason), that's kind of your country's fault and not the immigration systems fault.

while there are benefits to a culture of having 12 kids theres also negatives.

Europeans seem to have moderate family sizes for some reason.

why is that?

Its a mystery why I was downvoted

No, you know why you were downvoted, a suspiciosly fresh account. What happened to the previous account I wonder?

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