It's hard to imagine a more perfect encapsulation of the sheer, redundant ineptitude of our own federal government:
They have the same name. They were born on the same day in South Korea. And they were both assigned the same Social Security number after they emigrated to the United States.
This bureaucratic bungle has bedeviled Jieun Kim, of Los Angeles, and Jieun Kim, who lives just outside Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, for almost as long as they've been in this country.
Now, if you run a business and you make some sort of clerical error, you know how to fix it:
You just fix it.
You just go into the system, make the necessary changes, and then, you know, boom. It's done. Done. Over.
But this is the government, so of course nothing could be that simple:
Over the past five years, the 31-year-old women have had their banking and savings accounts shut down. They have had their credit cards blocked. They have been suspected of engaging in identity theft.
And, they say, the Social Security Administration has been either unable, or unwilling, to rectify its mistake.
Again, this is not hard. "Oh, you both got the same Social Security Number? Okay, we'll just issue new ones for both of you. There, done."
How is that so hard? It's not. And yet:
[After Chicago Kim] recently filled out an application to get a new Social Security number, the SSA sent her the same number she had before and blamed the snafu on computer error.
"This is because the computer recognizes you guys as one person," Chicagoland Kim says she was told by agency workers.
More ominously, LA Kim said, she was warned by some of the SSA workers she dealt with not to make a fuss about the mistake because it could delay her getting a green card.
"The officer told me that talking about this Social Security number mix-up could result in delaying the green card process that could be done in six months to 2-3 years," she said.
Classic: Rather than fix a simple problem, the government (a) blames technology, and (b) threatens the people they're supposed to be helping.
No resolution is forthcoming. The only bright side is the whimsical sort of camaraderie between the two women that appears to have grown out of this ridiculous situation.
LA Kim said she learned that her namesake in Evanston had, on Feb. 4, left a number with the bank with instructions for whoever was using her Social Security number "to contact her."
"I was very upset," LA Kim said. "Clearly, she was also very upset. So, our first text message didn't go well."
It wasn't long, though, before they both realized what happened.
"We figured out that we weren't weird people or thieves and that we happened to share one Social Security number," LA Kim said.
