Vocabulary notes

vital-records offi­ces	ЗАГС
to nab	поймать на месте преступления, арестовать
a tip	намек, сведения
deceased	умерший, покойный
a con man	мошенник
to dicker over	торговаться
chiseler	мошенник, пройдоха
to exact their toll	взыскивать, взимать дань
to tap	опустошать, перекачивать в свой карман

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the message of this text?

2. How and where can a person obtain a copy of the birth certificate?

3. What other documents can the criminal "breed" with the birth certificate?

4. Why do criminals most often seek to ob­tain the birth certificate of a person who died in infancy?

5. Who are those paper people?

6. How did a "welfare queen" managed to milk huge amounts of money?

7. Why did con men work it out so that the transaction took place after banking hours?

Task 5. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Agreement or disagreement should be followed by some comment

1. One of the most basic documents in American life is a credit card.

2. You can obtain a copy of certificate from vital-records offi­ces only personally.

3. If an American wants to open bank accounts, ob­tain credit, he/she needs a Social Security card or driver's license.

4. The official handing over a certified copy of the certificate can find out quickly whether that person is living or dead.

5. Only illegal aliens lay a financial bur­den on every citizen.

6. A "welfare queen" milked huge amounts of money from a variety of social-welfare programs.

7. Con men never dickered over price and agreed to buy a car without hesitation.

Task 6. Ask the questions to which the following statements are the answers:

1. More than ten million birth-certificate copies are obtained from vital-records offi­ces across the nation each year.

2. 80 percent of them are obtained by mail.

3. The criminal can "breed" other documents.

4. His existence will never be challenged.

5. The pa­per people make all Americans their vic­tims.

6. Illegal aliens take millions of jobs.

7. A tip caused authorities to investigate further.

8. She could have got about $600 a month for nothing.

9. The woman represented herself as an un­employed mother or widow.

10. They were well-dressed and backed with fraudu­lently obtained I.D-s.

Task 7. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean. Use them in your own sentences

the birth certificate, fee, unemploy­ment or welfare benefits, to challenge ex­istenc, assumed identities, illegal aliens, welfare chiselers, vague, a welfare queen, to back up, to milk money, preliminary hearing, to scan want-ads, legitimate

.

Task 8. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. You can obtain a copy of your own — or someone else's usually by merely paying a small fee and an­swering a few questions. America is not obviously more criminal than anywhere else. Under my proposals prisoners who cooperate and behave well will be able to earn up to 20% off their sentence, everyone else will serve their sentence in full.

2. The official handing over a certified copy of the certificate generally has no idea whether that person is living or dead, nor any quick means of find­ing out. These people are not insane, nor are they fools. After all, no lawyer really wants a fair and impartial juror. Nor would a juror with extensive knowledge of any field involved in the case be acceptable.

3. At her preliminary hearing, her own attorney proved to be unsure of her real name. They proved to know nothing about the man in question.

4. In California, a group of con men scanned want-ads for expensive cars being sold by private owners. Other recommendations being studied include measures to see that the I.D. of a criminal suspect is immediately verified at the time of his arrest.

5. They would present a phony cashier's check for the car and drive off. He was a nice guy but he would always come late whatever the occasion was.

6. "She could have got about $600 a month for nothing," said one detective on the case. All could have received a life sentence — but only ten actually did.

Task 9. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 3

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. Do criminals often use counterfeit ID-s and for what purposes?

2. Is there a problem of illegal aliens in Russia?

3. Can you suggest any solution to the problem under discussion?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations

Cloak for crime and terrorism. Fraudulent credentials enable paper people to live handsomely off the system while committing crimes or evading arrest. Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped Patty Hearst traveled with an extensive file of birth certificates, driver's licenses, credit cards and other documents to abet their under­ground existence. David Fine, 23, a fugitive in the 1970 University of Wisconsin bombing which killed an assistant professor, had been on the FBI's ten-most-wanted list for more than five years before his capture last January in California. He had at­tended university classes, collected unemployment payments and food stamps as a paper person. "I had managed to make a successful life for myself," Fine said.

A month earlier San Diego police arrested Douglas Hardy on a petit-larceny charge. His fingerprints were routinely sent to Washington, where the FBI spotted them as those of Dwight Armstrong, a second fugitive in the Wisconsin bombing. The FBI advised San Diego, only to find "Hardy" had been released be­cause of overcrowding at the jail. He is still at large.

Counterfeit citizens. Many illegal aliens are smuggled into this coun­try with no papers whatsoever, but once here they often resort to the uses of false identity to obtain un­employment and welfare benefits and other public services. They cost the public $12 billion a year. Cali­fornia officials estimate that they pay $100 million a year in welfare to counterfeit citizens, in New York City, 65,000 illegal aliens are en­rolled in the public schools at an annual cost of $78 million. Immigration officials estimate that there are eight million illegal aliens in the United States. Contrary to popular belief that they hold only menial jobs undesirable to the ma­jority of Americans, more than a million enjoy highly paid employ­ment. Recent apprehensions include a Greek plumber earning $12 an hour, a Jamaican carpenter making $300 a week, a West Indian electron­ics engineer with a salary of $57,000 a year. Government experts report that aliens annually send approxi­mately billion in wages out of the country.

Later this summer, the federal in­vestigating panel will report its find­ings to Attorney General Edward Levi. Among the recommendations under consideration: the matching of birth and death records, and instituting criminal penalties for fraudulent use of birth certificates. Other recommendations being studied include measures to see that the I.D. of a criminal suspect is immediately verified at the time of his arrest so known criminals won't be released; and institution of strict­er standards for identification of all applicants for driver's licenses and for Social Security, welfare and other public benefits.

Officials serving on the panel are aware that no amount of legislation or increased regulation can make up for simple vigilance at the grass-roots level. "And this in itself is a challenge," says Justice Depart­ment's David Muchow. "None of us likes to be held up for a long time making a credit-card purchase or cashing a check, and a lot of us want to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. But we have to remem­ber we are all paying the bills for those who make the paper trip. These people are exacting a hidden tax from all of us and, at the same time, fostering an atmosphere of doubt and mistrust that hurts every innocent citizen."