Bush Adds Electronic Scans to U.S. Immigration Plan (Update1)

By David S. Rosen and Catherine Dodge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... efer=home#

President Bush yesterday in Washington Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration announced steps to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants, including higher fines and a new electronic scanning program that will help detect forged documents.

The scanning feature will protect employers who hire illegal aliens through error, while strengthening cases against those who hire them intentionally, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a news conference in Washington today.

``With these tools, once we catch somebody, there's going to be no place to hide,'' Chertoff said.

The administration plan, which comes after Congress failed to approve immigration legislation sought by President George W. Bush, also includes hiring more border agents and revamping temporary worker programs, Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said.

``These are things we can do administratively without the Congress,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters today in Kennebunkport, Maine, where Bush is vacationing.

``The president would like to have seen comprehensive immigration reform completed by the Congress,'' Perino said. ``Short of that, the president asked his administration to look at what within the current law can we do through the executive branch that builds upon the initiatives or creates new initiatives that we can implement before the end of the president's term.''

`No Match' Regulation

To this end, the Homeland Security Department today issued a ``no match'' regulation. If information provided by an employee doesn't match information among more than 425 million documents at the Social Security Administration, employers will be mailed a ``no match'' letter requesting more information about the employee or directing the company to fire the worker, Chertoff said.

The `E-Verify' scanning program will remain voluntary for employers, except for those with federal contracts, Chertoff said.

Fines will increase by about 25 percent on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and the government is expanding criminal investigations of employers who hire large numbers of illegal aliens, the administration said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 742 criminal arrests in worksite enforcement cases so far this fiscal year, up from 716 in all of last fiscal year, Chertoff said.

Keep Gang Members Out

The administration also will boost efforts to keep gang members from entering the U.S., expanding the list of dangerous gangs whose members should be denied admission, Chertoff said.

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security plans to have 18,300 border agents employed by Dec. 31, 2008, up from about 14,000 today, and will hire 1,700 more agents in fiscal 2009.

``I'm not going to tell you that it's as good as what we were looking to get out of Congress,'' Chertoff said of the administration's actions. For now, ``We're going to have to rehabilitate the old tools and do the best we can.''

Senator Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who worked with Bush in an attempt to pass immigration overhaul earlier this year, said the new policies will make the immigration situation worse.

The no-match regulations will cause ``even more confusion about who can be hired, resulting in the unjust firings of legal workers who look foreign and driving more hard working people into the shadows,'' Kennedy said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Rosen in Washington at drosen6@bloomberg.net ; Catherine Dodge in Washington at Cdodge1@bloomberg.net .