Carlyle Group Targets Immigrants
The private equity giant is forcing fast-food franchisees to run Social Security number checks on their employees—but what is their real motive?
By Ryan Lynch

This article is from the May/June 2008 issue of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives ... lynch.html

Immigration advocates met at the corporate headquarters of the Carlyle Group in New York City on April 22 to protest the global private equity firm’s targeting of low-wage immigrant workers at two popular U.S. food chains, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins.

As part of a consortium of private equity firms including Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners, Carlyle is part-owner of Dunkin’ Brands, the company that owns the two chains. Individual stores are independently owned franchises, with franchisees paying the parent company a fee or a share of their profits.

Carlyle has directed franchisees to institute the Social Security Administration’s E-Verify system, ostensibly to ensure that their employees are legally allowed to work in the United States. Under the system, employers submit workers’ Social Security numbers and are notified if the numbers are valid or invalid.

But the agency’s database has been shown to be unreliable. According to the National Immigration Law Center, foreign-born U.S. citizens have a 10% chance of receiving so-called “tentative nonconfirmationâ€