Using a stolen SSN isn't exactly honest either. The person whose SSN it is can have all kinds of problems because of that. Even though their taxes are being taken off their pay, when the same person (the real one) is working too, having two full time jobs would put them in a higher tax bracket, they would pay through the nose. I saw a program on TV, actually not about an illegal immigrant but a fugitive, who'd stolen a guys SSN and this guy had trouble with the IRS constantly for years. He kept telling them it wasn't possible that he had two full time jobs in different states and they didn't care and kept on billing him. In the end he had a heart attack, he traced it to the stress of dealing with the IRS and on his sick leave, he eventually had the time to make the phone calls to the different workplaces he'd supposedly worked at and managed to find the guy still working at one of them and reported him to the IRS as having stolen his identity. However, the IRS were too slow to catch him and he ran again but all that lead to him getting caught in the end.