Thread: Crackdown on illegal immigrants loses in court

Crackdown on illegal immigrants loses in courtBy SPENCER S. HSU
The Washington Post
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/st ... _1011.html
Published on: 10/10/07

A federal judge barred the Bush administration Wednesday from launching a planned crackdown on U.S. firms that hire illegal immigrants, warning of its potentially "staggering" impact on law-abiding workers and companies.

In a firm rebuke of the White House, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction against the president's plan to pressure employers to fire up to 8.7 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers, starting this fall.

President Bush made the effort the centerpiece of a re-energized enforcement drive against illegal immigration in August after the Senate rejected his proposal to overhaul immigration laws. But the ruling — sought by major American labor, business and farm organizations — highlighted the chasm that the issue has opened between the Republican Party and its traditional business allies.

The case also called attention to the gulf between Washington rhetoric about the need to curtail immigration and the economic reality that many U.S. employers rely on illegal labor, and to the government's inability over nearly three decades to develop adequate tools for identifying unauthorized workers.

In a 22-page ruling, Breyer said the plaintiffs — an unusual coalition that included the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — had raised serious questions about the legality of the administration's plan to mail Social Security "no-match" letters to 140,000 U.S. employers.

"There can be no doubt that the effects of the rule's implementation will be severe," Breyer wrote, resulting in "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers."

The government letters were intended to warn employers that they must resolve questions about their employees' identities or fire them within 90 days. If they did not, employers could face "stiff penalties," including fines and even criminal prosecutions for violations of a federal law that bars employers from knowingly employing illegal workers, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said when he announced the plan on Aug. 10.

The plaintiffs persuaded the judge that the Social Security Administration database includes so many errors — incorporated in roughly 9.5 million individuals' records in 2003 alone — that its use in firings would unfairly discriminate against tens of thousands of legal workers, including native-born and naturalized U.S. citizens, and cause sweeping workforce disruptions that would burden companies.

"The government's proposal to disseminate no-match letters affecting more than eight million workers will, under the mandated time line, result in the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers," the judge wrote. "Moreover the threat of criminal prosecution ... reflects a major change in DHS policy."

Breyer also concluded that the government may have ignored a 1980 law, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, that requires it to calculate the cost of imposing new regulations that significantly burden small-business owners. Randel Johnson, a vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, said the ruling shows "the government cannot do anything it wants simply in the name of enforcement. They've got to be careful about building their record and complying with the law."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said: "This is a significant step towards overturning this unlawful rule, which would give employers an even stronger way to keep workers from freely forming unions. ... More than 70 percent of SSA discrepancies refer to U.S. citizens."

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff expressed disappointment at the decision and said the administration will continue to aggressively enforce immigration laws while considering an appeal that plaintiff's lawyers said could take at least nine months.

"Today's ruling is yet another reminder of why we need Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform," Chertoff said. "The American people have been loud and clear about their desire to see our nation's immigration laws enforced."

Several analysts said the Bush administration's plan was devised to push business interests into the debate by demonstrating that the failure of legislative reforms would carry costs, and to reassure anti-immigration conservative lawmakers that the White House was able and willing to crack down on offenders.

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said the ruling "shows how ineffective the current laws are."

"It reinforces the opinion that many of us hold that until you have a better legal framework — which requires new legislation — we're stuck very much with the status quo," Meissner said.

In a statement, Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., an opponent of Bush's approach who won election to the House last year on the issue, criticized the court. "What part of 'illegal' does Judge Breyer not understand?" he said. "At a time when the federal government is finally trying to enforce current immigration law, we cannot have activist judges stand in the way of doing what is right."

The scope of the problem is uncontested. A three-year government audit ending in 2001 found "widespread" misuse of Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants, who often present fake or fraudulent documents to work. Overall, 7.2 million illegal immigrants account for at least 10 percent of low-skilled U.S. workers, and 5 percent of the overall U.S. workforce, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of 2005 U.S. Census data.

Illegal immigrants make up an even greater portion of workers in specific industries and service occupations, including 24 percent of U.S. workers in farming, 17 percent in cleaning, 14 percent in construction and 12 percent in food preparation. But the government's record in developing tools to screen such workers is spotty, largely because of successful efforts by resistant employers, labor unions and civil rights groups to water them down. (begin optional add)

A government program, begun in 1996, to verify the validity of workers' Social Security numbers remains voluntary and covers only about 23,000 of 8 million U.S. employers. It also is hampered by a high false-alarm rate and limited ability to detect identity theft that involves stolen or fraudulent numbers. Between June 2004 and May 2006, it erroneously rejected 11 percent of foreign-born U.S. citizens and 1.3 percent of authorized foreign-born non-citizens, according to a report provided to Congress.

In protest, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, signed legislation in August that would bar Illinois companies from participating in the program until it is 99 percent accurate.

The Department of Homeland Security proposed in June 2006 to prosecute immigration fraud based on the Social Security no-match letters, and finalized its plans this summer. The AFL-CIO and ACLU filed suit to halt the start of mailings Sept. 4, joined later by the U.S. chamber and trade associations for the agriculture, restaurant and construction industries.

On Aug. 31, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney issued a temporary restraining order pending an Oct. 1 hearing before Judge Breyer, whom President Clinton appointed in 1997 and whose brother is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=2719

This guy is a real liberal Californian idiot who wants to throw away my home state to everyone who happens to be the victim of corrupt leaders all over the world, the leaders who screw their own people out of everything that American offers them. White guilt?


Breyer, Charles R.
Born 1941 in San Francisco, CA

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U. S. District Court, Northern District of California
Nominated by William J. Clinton on July 24, 1997, to a seat vacated by D. Lowell Jensen; Confirmed by the Senate on November 8, 1997, and received commission on November 12, 1997.

Education:
Harvard College, A.B., 1963

University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, J.D., 1966

Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Oliver Carter, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, 1966-1967
Counsel, Legal Aid Society of San Francisco, California, 1967
Assistant district attorney, District Attorney's Office, City & County of San Francisco, California, 1967-1973
Assistant special prosecutor, Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973-1974
Private practice, San Francisco, California, 1974-1979
Chief assistant district attorney, District Attorney's Office, City and County of San Francisco, California, 1979
Private practice, San Francisco, California, 1980-1997

Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male