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The Wall Street Journal has followed the Obama administration's crackdown on hiring illegal workers. On May 3, 2012, WSJ published the following article by Miriam Jordan (online version published here): The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2012 Thursday
HEADLINE: U.S. News: Fresh Raids Target Illegal Hiring
BYLINE: By Miriam Jordan
The Department of Homeland Security, continuing its crackdown on employers
who hire illegal immigrants, has ordered hundreds of companies in recent weeks
to submit their hiring records for inspection.
This year's first "silent raids" haven't been publicly announced by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS agency that conducts them. But an
ICE spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that as of March 29, the agency had
notified 500 businesses "of all sizes and types" to turn over I-9
employment-eligibility forms and other documents for audits.
"These inspections will determine whether or not the businesses are complying
with their employment-eligibility verification requirements," said Gillian
Christensen, ICE deputy press secretary. "No one industry is targeted, nor is
any one industry immune from scrutiny," she added. The government doesn't
divulge the names of companies under investigation.
Since January 2009, the Obama administration has audited at least 7,533
employers suspected of hiring illegal labor and imposed about $100 million in
administrative and criminal fines -- more audits and penalties than were imposed
during the entire George W. Bush administration. The latest penalty hit HerbCo
International Inc., a big Washington state-based supplier of organic herbs,
which agreed Tuesday to pay $1 million in fines for employing illegal immigrants
and then rehiring some of them after an ICE audit last year.
President Barack Obama is walking a fine line as he turns up the heat on
companies that hire illegal immigrants and at the same time courts Hispanic
voters, many of whom oppose a crackdown. While the audits don't lead to the
deportation of a firm's illegal workers, they all lose their jobs. Critics of
the crackdown say it drives more immigrants to exploitative, off-the-books work.
For firms, the audits can lead to deep losses in productivity, in addition to
civil and criminal fines.
"The president is trying to have it both ways -- appease the enforcement
hard-liners while appealing to Hispanic voters," said Craig Regelbrugge,
co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, a group that
lobbies for a loosening of restrictions on illegal immigrants. The audits
"routinely hit good employers who . . . treat workers well, leaving crippled
farms and shattered families in their wake."
The audits are most visible when they hit fast-food chains, hotels and
agricultural concerns. But the inspections also have affected light
manufacturers and financial and garment firms.
"The expanding rate and reach of I-9 audits is starting to chip away at the
perception that only the most egregious employers are at risk of an enforcement
action by ICE," said Julie Myers, who was ICE chief during the Bush
administration and runs a compliance consultancy. "Companies in all industries
need to be vigilant."
ICE's Washington headquarters confirmed it has instructed regional field
offices to dedicate a specific number of hours to initiating audits. For
instance, an ICE agent this year told several grower labor conferences in
Michigan that each field agent had been instructed to devote 250 hours to audits
this year, several people in attendance said.
Craig Anderson, a Michigan Farm Bureau manager who was at the events, said
the agent also told the group to expect a 40% increase in the number of
employers inspected this year. "There is no question there has been a steady
increase in audits," said Mr. Anderson.
ICE declined to provide details of audit quotas. But the agency spokeswoman,
Mrs. Christensen, said "performance goals" had been set for each of its 26 field
offices "to ensure the best use of taxpayer dollars."
Attorneys who advise audited companies report that some employers are being
subjected to a second audit. "I have several clients who were audited once,
complied and were then audited again six months to a year later," said Wendy
Madden, a business immigration attorney.
At a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D., Calif.) voiced concern to Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano that I-9 audits "are going to decimate our farms and farm-dependent
jobs."
Ms. Napolitano responded that through the audit process, "we try to pick
those [employers] who are really knowingly and intentionally violating the law
when they have other options . . . but the underlying issue goes back to the
immigration law itself."
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas), said Tuesday that
ICE audits "point to an underlying issue: The current paper-based I-9 system is
unreliable and outdated. Because fake documents are produced by the millions and
can be obtained cheaply, the I-9 system is susceptible to fraud. We should
replace this outdated system with E-Verify, a successful Web-based program that
quickly identifies illegal immigrants working in the U.S. and protects jobs for
legal workers."
On the nation's farms, the overwhelming majority of laborers are illegal
immigrants, according to the Department of Labor. Farmers in Michigan, who rely
on 45,000 seasonal workers to pick apples, berries and other crops, say they're
bracing for audits as the harvest begins.
"An audit would force us to fire 70% to 80% of our workers," said Fred Leitz,
a fourth-generation Michigan farmer employing 250 seasonal workers. "The people
working the fields and harvesting the crops that feed our nation need work
authorization."
The surge in enforcement activity and the lack of an immigration overhaul
risk undermining U.S. agriculture and the nation's food security, Mr. Leitz
argued. |
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