The following is one of those stories that at first blush, you check the calendar to make sure that it isn’t April 1st. The next thing you do is pinch yourself to make sure you’re awake. Finally, desperate not to believe what you have just read, you swear off dropping acid, smoking pot, and taking other mind altering substances in hopes that the hallucination that has appeared in front of you will disappear – the result of some drug addled stupor you’ve fallen into.
Alas, you then read the story again and realize that it is not April 1st, you are, in fact, awake, and that you haven’t dropped acid for 30 years anyway so what’s the point?
A 22-year-old woman is suing a Chicago Spanish-language radio station over allegations that they refuse to give her the car she won in a contest because she’s undocumented.Maribel Nava Alvarez won the Corvette on July 4, 2005, in a raffle sponsored by 107.9 FM La Ley.
In a lawsuit naming both the radio station and its parent company, Spanish Broadcasting System, Alvarez says La Ley withheld the car when officials found out she’s undocumented.
She is suing for breach of contract and emotional distress.
In a written statement, La Ley said that it is legally required to get a valid Social Security number or tax identification number from anyone who wins prizes worth more than $500.
The station tried to give Alvarez the car even though her tax information couldn’t be verified, the statement said.
Alvarez said she was never told she needed to be a U.S. citizen or legal resident to win the car.
I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw off the floor…
What’s wrong with this picture? We can start by taking the Tribune to task for referring to the woman as “undocumented.” She is, of course, an illegal alien who is breaking the law by residing in the United States without a visa or green card. But hey! Whose counting?
And I don’t know what’s more shocking; the fact that the station tried to give her the car anyway without collecting the necessary tax information or the unmitigated gall of the woman to sue for “emotional distress.” Living here illegally is emotionally distressing in and of itself. But to try and soak a radio station for trying to follow the law and deny her the benefit of her ill gotten gains is beyond the pale, beyond avarice, and beyond belief.
The Spanish Broadcast System attorney played a little hardball with the woman:
Alvarez’s suit also names SBS lawyer James Cueva, who sent her attorney a letter on Dec. 19, 2005, threatening to contact immigration officials if she pursued a lawsuit.“I will caution you that if you insist on filing suit against SBS, I will in turn be forced to refer this matter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as I believe your client is in this country illegally,” the letter said.
Cueva’s remarks “have sometimes been presented without proper context,” the station’s statement said.
Alvarez said she has left the Chicago area out of fear that she would be deported.
Why should the station apologize for a lawyer doing his duty as a citizen and reporting an illegal alien? The context is perfect; an illegal alien was trying to claim an expensive prize without having to pay taxes on it and was threatening to sue in order to get even more loot from the station. Whatever context you want to view that in is fine with me.
The woman is a fool. She should have waited a few months when the amnesty bill that will almost surely be passed gives her everything her little mercenary heart desires.
Until then, I sure hope she finds a way to deal with her “emotional distress.”
1:27 pm
just wow…..I am taking the advice of a recent email and attempting to become an illegal alien also so I can skip out on taxes and ignore insurance and licensing requirements prescribed by law.
2:40 pm
According to the article, attorney James Cueva DIDN’T do his duty as a citizen and turn in an illegal alien, but rather THREATENED to do so IF the lawsuit was filed. I don’t see much a hero in Mr. Cueva or the SBS. If he were not an attorney, his actions would look a lot like blackmail. He should have immediately turned over the information regarding the illegal to the INS, not use it as a legal manuever.
That said, I wish the punishment for filing frivolous lawsuits included a death penalty option for those filing them and attorneys who facilitate them. On illegals overall, we need to decide if we want cheap yardwork, or borders with integrity. Efforts to have it both ways leads to this kind of foolishness and invalidates the War on Terror.
11:07 pm
Illegal alien demands free car
What the open-borders entitlement culture has wrought (via Chicago Sun-Times): Winning a Chevrolet Corvette is the stuff of dreams. In Maribel Nava Alvarez’s case, it has been a nightmare. The former Little Village resident said officials with local r…
1:38 am
Since when did illegal aliens gain rights in America? I am shocked that they would be allowed to file a lawsuit!
5:41 pm
I was under the impression that standard legal boilerplate for such contests includes the statement “open to legal US residents 18 years of age and older”. It seems highly unlikely that the station would hold a contest without laying out the basic ground rules regarding contest entry, disqualification, use of likenesses for publicity, etc. In that case, I don’t understand what the legal basis for this lawsuit is.
12:22 pm
[...] [HT:Â Right Wing Nuthouse] [...]
6:56 pm
Came here at age 7…
If you read the article, they claim she came here at age 7. I don’t know why you did not mention that in your post but I think it makes a huge difference. Unless you believed she crossed the border at 7 on her own, I think she should be given some leaway because she cannot be blamed for what her parents did.
And before you say that she should have packed her bags and left back to Mexico when she turned 18, how realistic is it to imagine someone who has been living here from 7 to 18 suddenly pack up and go into another country.
Obviously, the article doesn’t have all the details that would be needed to judge her character but with those details missing, a little caution would be in order before judgement is passed!
1:44 pm
One point that everyone seems to miss is that the corporation would be assuming all tax liability.
Since she has no taxpayer ID # (Social Security or otherwise) the corporation cannot transfer tax liability to any legal entity.
Instead of writing off the entire (out-of pocket) cost as promotional, they would be “on the hook” for
1) corporate taxes (just as if they had given the money to the stockholders)
2) personal taxes owed (unknown due to no tax ID )
2a) personal tax amount at maximum rate possible
2b) fines and penalties for unpaid personal taxes
3) fines and penalties for not keeping books to IRS standards (or even GAAP)
4) fines and penalties for transferring assets through untraceable paths to unknown ends. (same as laws used against bookies’ runners and private collections believed as destined to fund terror activities)
Now sometimes the government looks the other way. Like when Mass. bars and Irish taverns have a thug inside the door collecting “for the boys” and everyone knows it is destined to buy guns and explosives for the IRA.
And sometimes the government changes their minds like the fairly recent crackdowns on collecting for Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah.
Some of the rules are recipient blind (because it might be impossible to prove the real intended reviever).
Following those recipient blind rules makes withholding this prize until US tax law can be met a necessity.