Denver weighs random immigration-status checks for contractors
Posted on Saturday, December 05 @ 01:27:52 EST
Topic: Illegal Immigration News in the US
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 The city of Denver may consider doing random checks on the immigration status of contract workers after a construction company was found to have used more than a dozen illegal immigrants to work on city projects.
After being alerted by a constituent last summer, City Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz asked the auditor's office to check into Noraa Concrete Construction Corp. workers on a job in west Denver.
Subjects = Illegal Immigration, invalid Social Security numbers, verify workers, E-Verify, illegal immigrants, undocumented workers
December 3, 2009
Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post
The review found that 12 of the company's 25 employees on that project had invalid Social Security numbers. Auditor Dennis Gallagher's office found an additional 13 questionable Social Security numbers for Noraa employees on three other city projects.
Now Faatz is joining forces with City Councilman Chris Nevitt, who has strong ties to labor groups, to push random auditing of city contractors to ensure they employ only documented workers.
"The fact we have laid off 170 perfectly qualified competent city workers because of budget cuts, yet money would be funneled to other people when there is a question about the legitimacy of their Social Security numbers, is mind-boggling," Faatz said.
Nevitt said he and Faatz are in "preliminary" discussions about bringing forth an ordinance. He has asked the city attorney's office and the auditor's office to research how other cities handle the issue.
According to published reports, St. Charles County, Mo., officials began requiring random audits of developer payrolls after undocumented workers were found working construction jobs at an affordable-housing development. In 2006, Tulsa, Okla., passed a resolution condemning the use of illegal immigrants by city contractors.
Colorado law limited
Assistant City Attorney David Broadwell said most of the examples he is aware of involved state laws that require contractors to use the E-Verify system, which is supposed to ensure the legal status of new employees.
Such a requirement was passed into law in Colorado in 2006, but only for government contracts that don't produce an "end product," Broadwell said.
Broadwell added that federal law restricts the use of E-Verify to the hiring of new employees, not checking existing ones.
Lori Kaiser, the controller for Noraa, said that the firm uses E-Verify but that the employees in question were hired before they started using the system.
She said the firm has contacted the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department and is waiting for further instructions.
Nevitt and Faatz are a somewhat unlikely pairing on the issue of illegal immigration.
Nevitt spoke out against ballot initiatives aimed at requiring the impoundment of cars when police encounter unlicensed drivers, measures critics contended were aimed at illegal immigrants, while Faatz supported those measures.
Parsing the issues
Nevitt said he views the issue of paying city contractors who use undocumented workers with taxpayer money as different from the vehicle-impound initiatives.
"Illegal immigrants are, nonetheless, here illegally, and consequently we shouldn't spend public money employing them," he said.
In the instance of Noraa, the city ended up withholding payment of about $215,000 until the company pledged that undocumented workers would no longer work on city jobs, said Denis Berckefeldt, spokesman for the auditor. He said the issue of undocumented workers working for a city contractor has been raised one other time in the past six years.
Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Jefferson County Republican, said he was surprised anyone on the Denver council was tackling the issue.
"I'm amazed that Denver is taking interest in this and very glad to hear it," said Tancredo, a longtime advocate for tighter immigration controls.
Berckefeldt said the auditor's office shouldn't be the entity that ends up verifying Social Security numbers if the City Council decides to require random checks of contractor payrolls.
He said the city controller's office actually has the wherewithal to do such checks.
"We don't have the manpower, and we don't have the time," Berckefeldt said. "We don't have the capacity to do it."
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