Social security inquiry by employer - what do you say?

I am currently job hunting and was wondering -- for those who have gone through this... If your employer has ever asked you for your ssn once getting a job, what did you say amd how did he/she respond? In that situation, what should you say? I know some employers will be willing to pay you off the books, but do they usually mind and what is a good way of going about it.

I was thinking about saying that as a international student visa holder, I am not supposed to work (I am undocumented...), but I find it quite embarassing because I am not sure how this would unravel.

Thanks everyone!

You should tell them the truth. Although I get paid minimum wage, a job is a job. I told my employer the truth to start off with and she was kind of iffy in the beginning but was ok with it. When I was looking for a job, i applied to a lot of places and went through a lot of interviews. At the interview it felt like I had the job but when I explained to them about my status, they just told me they will call me back after they discuss it with the boss etc. That was that. If they dont call they dont call. There is nothing we can do about that. Another interviewer just told me that they deal with big companies and that they will need payroll information of the employees or something so that cant hire me. However they said that they will keep my resume for the future in case I get my status fixed. This can be seen as a way of networking for the future? I dont know. I just tried to think positively about my situation although it is very difficult. Just keep your heads up. I graduated from a 4 year university with a degree in Marketing and getting paid minimum wage, 8 dollars an hour. Theres nothing I can do but rely on the Dream Act!

Yeah, I agree with the above comment. Tell the truth. If you tell them you're on a international student visa, they'll tell you that you need to apply for work permit, which is available to student visa holders but there's a limit on the number of hours they can work. Whereas if you tell the truth, 1. you'll feel a lot better, 2. the government does honor honesty in immigrant situations, and 3. if your employer hired you believing your lie and later found out, imagine how they'd view immigrants and also you.

I firmly believe that we have to do everything we can in order to show America that immigrants are not filthy, lying, scheming criminals. Why give others more reasons to look down upon us?

case in point, America's Most Wanted, rather recently too, showed this case of someone whose identity was stolen in mexico. Apparently an illegal immigrant got the documents in the black market, and at some point when there was a medical emergency of some sort used that person's identity ruining her credit. And then used the identity several times over several years causing a large monetary loss and appearing in AMW. That does not reflect well on the rest of us.

yeah but unfortunately if you tell them the truth, you will be fired. otherwise your employer will be breaking the law.

Yeah, but there are countless businesses that hire knowing that people are undocumented. They just "look the other way". I know this for a fact because that's how I've always had my jobs.

Another advatange as to why they would hire undocumented is that they bank in that it will be almost impossible for them to get another job, so, they hire them to do a minimum wage job, train them and can be pretty certain that if they are somewhat happy they will stay loyal to the job for far longer then other people. Furthermore, employers do not have to pay for an insurance plan to cover undocumented, thus financial advantage.

This is perhaps much harder, but try to to either get job from the internet(ebay!) and slowly build up or have your own business. I used to work before and until recently I couldn't even find a job, it's been over a year and I don't want to go back to working at restaurants. It's really hard if you're not 100% into it, but afterwards everything just flows. I'm finally barely now, after a couple of months, beginning to see my bank account go from 0 to a couple hundred bucks and I'm able to pay my bills without worrying .

Or get a job at a restaurant or retail, where they don't have e-verify, try mom-and-pop stores too.

Just one thing, don't limit yourself by your status, ignore it but not completely. Realize that in life, there are always ton of alternatives because someone before you went through what you went through and someone in the future will probably too in some way or another.

The only problem with ebay is that you need an SSN to create an account. But here say you use someone else's number with their permission of course, here is something I did for a while. I would go to auctions of places that went under, buy their computers and technology equipment and sell it. My experience is that stuff bought on auction usually sells for a tenth of the original price and could be resold for more as used, it does however has its risks where you might end up losing money.

Another thing that my mom did, sell products as a representative, this is specially useful if you have a tendency of going to a place where the same people are going to go on a regular basis, i.e., if you are in college selling to friends, it starts slow but has a potential of becoming very profitable, some will even allow you to direct them to your "e-store" which you have to do nothing except direct people to a special link they make for you and you get a percentage of what the people buy.

mom-and-pop places are great but I would think only if you are in an area where immigration is high, and people are used to it, and only if the people in the area seem to lean towards pro-immigration affiliation.

you need a ssn to create an ebay account? didn't know that...