One more victimhood story with an unsympathetic storyline

Over the years I periodically post examples from NPR, the New York Time and the Washington Post where they write an article in which they are trying to create sympathy for some favored group but then the actual facts of the case completely undermine their position.

And here's another one.  It is a little more balanced but ultimately is morally unsound.  From Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price. by Eli Saslow.  The subheading is Thousands of undocumented workers rely on fraudulent Social Security numbers. One of them belonged to Dan Kluver.

A Guatemalan illegally enters the US and spends decades working illegally, accrues multiple DUI charges, starts a family, is deported and illegally returns multiple times, and kills an American and injures an American child in an auto accident.   In addition, he subjects an American citizen to 15 years of financial and legal turmoil because the Guatemalan stole the American's identity.  

Dan Kluver, the American, spends fifteen years and hundreds of hours trying to sort out the tax and financial consequences when two people are using the same Social Security number.  Kluver is in debt to the US because he was assessed by Social Security and the IRS to have earned more than he had.  He has been on a payment plan trying to payoff Social Security and IRS assessments that were never accurate in the first place.  Fifteen years of financial and legal uncertainty and risk.  All because of a stolen social security number used by an illegal immigrant.  Fifteen years.

The illegal immigrant in his later years cleaned up.  Hard worker, family man, church-going man.  

And illegal, dangerous, accidental death, and willing for an American citizen's life to be turned upside down in order for the illegal immigrant to continue enjoying his own life in the US.  

The reporter did his best to make the two men equally sympathetic but they simply aren't and even the New York Times readers are calling him out for it.  

Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price. - But one man was an innocent American who was the victim of the other's deeds.  The other man was an illegal immigrant causing an American fifteen years of time, money, legal and financial risk, debt and consequences he did not himself incur.  The American paid a price for the illegal immigrant's actions.  The illegal immigrant paid no price for the American's actions because there were no actions against him.  

As sympathetic as the illegal immigrant might be in his later years, he is essentially a predator of the life of the American and the reporter regards them as equally victimized.  

There is a tremendous story to be told here - the consequences not only to American federal and state budgets arising from illegal immigrant identity theft, but the consequences to all those Americans, usually in the bottom half of income quintiles, who cannot afford the hours and the professional legal and accounting services required to free oneself of the consequences when someone else is using your ID.  

That is a worthwhile story to tell, with a real underdog (those victimized by such theft), with the real potential to do good (the government needs to get serious about its own actions to secure and police the identities on which it relies.)  It is fine to empathize with others wanting to enjoy the extraordinary benefits of American freedom and prosperity.  It is not fine to assume that wanting American freedoms and prosperity is enough justify illegal actions that victimize Americans individually and collectively.

As even the NYT readers appear to believe.  Almost universally disturbed by the New York Times treating the American victim and the illegal alien perpetrator as equal victims.