The issue of illegal immigration continues to dominate the political debate.

Last week, the federal government conducted a series of raids at various workplaces that resulted in more than 1,100 arrests of illegal aliens.

As the raids were taking place, many Hispanic activists were preparing for a May 1 national protest designed to showcase the importance of illegals to the American economy.

(Why activists chose a day that is typically aligned with the communist movement can only be considered -- along with the appearance of Mexican flags at previous pro-illegal demonstrations -- another unfortunate political miscalculation.)

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans vow to move ahead on stalled immigration legislation and even Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has now come out in favor of securing our Mexican border with a wall or a fence.

The issue is fraught with contradictions and political grandstanding.

Democrats argue that companies which hire illegals should be punished -- but not too harshly because that might prompt businesses to avoid taking on any Mexican workers, at all. In addition, Democrats want to appear strong on lawbreakers, but generally oppose any efforts to demand proof of citizenship before voting, obtaining a driver's license or taking advantage of any government handouts.

Many Republicans, on the other hand, bang their fists about cracking down on illegals, but don't want to anger the business interests that benefit from the free flow of labor across the border.

It's a longshot that any serious legislation can emerge given the current political climate.

But at the very least, the federal bureaucracy should be using the tools it currently enjoys to crack down on those who break the law when they enter the country.

For instance, Knight Ridder Newspapers reports this week that the IRS and Social Security Administration have records on thousands of workers -- many of them illegal aliens -- who are using bogus identification numbers to stay in the country and collect a paycheck.

But, "The two agencies don't analyze their data to root out immigration fraud, and they won't share their millions of records so law enforcement agencies can do that, either," the news service reports.

Thanks to bureaucratic inertia, Social Security officials have ignored such abuses as a restaurant company that submitted 4,100 duplicate Social Security numbers for its workers. In another instance, the agency did nothing in the case of a child whose Social Security number was used 742 times by workers in 42 states.

While keeping certain IRS data confidential is an important necessity to ensure the rights of all taxpaying citizens, why would the Social Security administration cite privacy law for its inaction, as Knight Ridder reports? Illegals who fraudulently use another's Social Security number have no right to privacy.

As revealed during last week's raids, more than half of those arrested were using fake Social Security records.

In the absence of real reform on illegal immigration, the federal bureaucracies should make it a priority to analyze the data they collect to help law enforcement officials crackdown on the widespread abuse of existing laws designed to secure our borders.