Thread: MO:Targeting employers needed

Our Voice
Targeting employers needed
Tougher penalties on those hiring illegal workers are overdue.

May 5, 2009


A change last week in the fight against illegal immigration could be the best step forward on this vexatious front in many years.
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U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill deserves some credit.

She has pushed unwaveringly for the federal government to focus on arresting employers who knowingly hire illegal workers, rather than just rounding up the workers. And she did so when it was not politically expedient.

She advocated for more employer enforcement as a candidate in 2006, even though many of her constituents at the time were calling for harsher penalties for the illegal workers themselves.

But McCaskill and other high-level lawmakers consistently maintained that only though the investigation and development of civil or criminal cases against corporations and businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers will the Department of Homeland Security truly make a dent in the problem.

Now, in line with plans for a new approach by the Obama administration, the department has announced policy changes that will put employers more in the crosshairs of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The changes were implemented last week to ratchet up efforts against business owners who for years have avoided prosecution by complaining that workers produced falsified documents or that the government's system for verifying immigrant status is difficult to navigate.

ICE field offices have now been instructed, according to the New York Times, to "obtain indictments, criminal arrest or search warrants, or a commitment from a U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute the targeted employer, before arresting employees for civil immigration violations at a work site."

It's part of an effort that many like McCaskill have predicted will deter businesses from seeking out -- or turning a blind eye to -- illegal workers.

The changes also mark a radical departure from enforcement efforts during the Bush Administration, which allowed individual ICE field offices to determine whether to seek evidence against employers. Many did not.

As a result, according to the Associated Press, about 6,000 people were arrested in immigration raids in 2008 but only 135 employers or managers.

As long ago as September 2006, McCaskill said:

"The magnet attracting illegal immigrants across our borders is jobs. There is no enforcement against employers who are hiring illegal immigrants. And everyone in Washington knows this."

A former prosecutor, McCaskill told us recently that making a case against a business is not that difficult. Using undercover workers, she said, is one fairly simple way.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said ICE will be doing that, and taking other tacts. She said the agency will focus on "renewing a priority on employers who are making money off of these illegal immigrants and giving them jobs that should be going to American workers, as opposed to just counting numbers."

It might have looked good for ICE in years past to round up dozens of illegal workers and call in the media after a raid. But, with willing replacement workers streaming across U.S. borders all the time, it doesn't help stop the problem.

Maybe ending some of the illegal job offers will.
http://www.news-leader.com/article/2009 ... 320/-1/rss

Get the employers yes but also get the illegals at the same time.

Can't these employers go to the local State Unemployment Office for E-Verifying? No for the States don't require E-Verify, yet of I-9s.