And at the Washington Post, no less.

From the Washington Times:

Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, has come out of the closet and announced to the world that he is an illegal alien. In his tell-all confession, published in the New York Times Magazine, he outs not only himself, but others who abetted his illegal presence and employment in the United States, including The Post itself, which continued to employ him even after a member of the paper’s management learned that he had lied about his citizenship.

Most important, Mr. Vargas‘ confession exposes the ease with which he, and millions of illegal aliens like him, can circumvent the law. It was as easy as a piece of white masking tape and a photocopy machine. Mr. Vargas writes that when he was a teenager, he and his grandfather covered over the portion of his Social Security card that said he was ineligible to work in the United States before photocopying it. Using a copy of an already flimsy card that constitutes the most important piece of identification Americans possess, Mr. Vargas was able repeatedly to flout the law against illegal aliens working in this country.

Why, you must wonder, does it seem like this kind of thing would only be likely to go down at liberal (or multiple liberal, in this case, as indicated in the article’s next paragraph) newspapers?

If any of his employers - The Washington Post, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post - had simply verified his Social Security number, they would have learned that it was invalid for employment. If the Social Security Administration (SSA) had been required to disclose that it was collecting taxes on an account that was not authorized for employment, the government itself could have identified Mr. Vargas as an illegal alien and taken action. But employers are not required to verify Social Security numbers, and government agencies are not required to inform other government agencies that laws are being violated. And so we have an estimated 7 million illegal aliens on payrolls in the United States.

Whether it was his intent or not, the timing of Mr. Vargas‘ confession provides compelling testimony in support of legislation introduced earlier this month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (Texas Republican) and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa Republican). Both of these bills would mandate that instead of a cursory inspection of any of more than two dozen different documents, all employers would be required to use the E-Verify system, which verifies information against Social Security and immigration records.

The Smith and Grassley bills also would discourage an additional and common form of fraud perpetrated by Mr. Vargas. In his public confession, Mr. Vargas admits to having perjured himself repeatedly by attesting that he was a U.S. citizen on the I-9 forms he filled out for employers. Mandatory verification of his Social Security number would have revealed that he was neither a citizen nor an alien authorized to work in this country and could have subjected him to criminal charges.

On the other hand, there being a certain amount of competition between newspapers, perhaps the Washington Post et al were merely trying to outdo the New York Times’ Jason Blair episode.