Thread: Employers Grapple with Immigration Crackdown

Haven't see this posted, but if it has please delete. Be warned, there is some whining in this story:
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Employers Grapple with Immigration Crackdown

August 21, 2007
Stella M. Hopkins -- The Charlotte Observer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - New federal rules released Aug. 10 increase the potential for fines and criminal prosecution for employing illegal immigrants, and that renews a long-running concern: How can employers know whether workers are in the country legally?

"How can they check their work force when they don't have an easy, reliable system to check it?" said Alan Gordon, a Charlotte immigration lawyer. "That's just one of the many problems."

The federal government offers several free programs to verify documents presented by new employees. The most comprehensive - formerly known as Basic Pilot, now E-Verify - compares employee information with Social Security and immigration databases. The Social Security Administration's programs check only its records.

Critics say the programs are cumbersome, time-consuming and have glitches that can miss illegal immigrants or falsely reject a legal worker. They also complain that employers should not be immigration gatekeepers.

Still, usage might pick up since the Department of Homeland Security released rules that say employers must fire workers using bogus Social Security numbers or face fines of up to $11,000 per worker. Illegal immigrants, who need the numbers to get jobs, often buy fake Social Security cards or use other people's numbers.

Enrollment already has been jumping in Homeland Security's E-Verify, available nationwide for nearly three years. Nearly 20,000 employers are using the free online program, up 55 percent from December and more than triple the number in March last year.

Employers are using the program at 140,000 sites, compared with 40,000 in December. That's still less than 2 percent of the nation's 8.8 million business establishments, but growing rapidly. A test project that provides employers with a photo of immigrant employees also could improve accuracy.

Homeland Security's get-tough move comes as immigration reform once again died in Congress. That leaves the nation without a resolution to one of its most emotional issues.

Hiring illegal immigrants is against the law. But federal law doesn't require employers to verify workers' immigration status or whether their documents are valid. That 21-year-old loophole has enabled millions of illegal immigrants to get jobs.

The new rules focus on what are called "no-match" letters from the Social Security Administration. The agency sends thousands of the letters every year, notifying employers that they're submitting wage reports with Social Security numbers and employee names that don't match agency records.

A mismatch can be a simple mistake, such as a misspelled name or transposed numbers. But they're also strong evidence a company might be employing illegal immigrants.

Employers have previously ignored many such notices. Under the new rule, effective next month, employers have 90 days to resolve differences or fire the employee. An employer who keeps a worker with mismatched Social Security information now risks being accused of knowingly employing an illegal immigrant - the threshold for fines and criminal charges.

Homeland Security has been more aggressive in worksite enforcement but still visits only a fraction of all businesses.

But employers are increasingly nervous. Raids that round up illegal workers can shut down plants or otherwise idle a business, causing huge losses. Employers also fear fines and charges.

The new rule, first proposed in June 2006, will further pressure employers to determine whether workers are here legally.

Employers using the verification programs must check every new hire, not just immigrants. The programs bounce names that don't match government records. Workers are allowed to prove their numbers are legit, but illegal immigrants can't do that.

A drawback of E-Verify is that it can't detect a person using someone else's full identity - including name, Social Security number and date of birth. The agency is trying to address that problem with a new program that electronically transmits a photo when an employer sends in data for an immigrant worker. The photo program has been tested with about 100 employers who volunteered for the project.

"The employer can see an image of the person that should appear" on the identification documents submitted, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security unit managing the program. "More than likely we'll expand the program."

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WHAT'S NEXT?

•Homeland Security will increase civil fines by about 25 percent for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Those fines currently start at $275 to $2,200, per worker, for a first offense. Repeat offenders can be fined as much as $11,000.

•The administration plans a rule that would require all federal contractors to use E-Verify to check workers. There are more than 200,000 companies providing goods and services to the federal government.

•E-Verify will tap new sources, such as visa and passport information, to verify documents.

•Homeland Security will ask states to share Department of Motor Vehicle photos and records with E-Verify to reduce the use of fake driver's licenses to get jobs.

•Federal officials will encourage state governments to use E-Verify.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/ne ... s-news.asp

Critics say the programs are cumbersome, time-consuming and have glitches that can miss illegal immigrants or falsely reject a legal worker. They also complain that employers should not be immigration gatekeepers.

Sounds more to me like employers are lazy and just don't want to have to do a little work.

We have 9 LEGAL GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS.

We should tax business convicted of hiring illegals for back taxes and all the social costs we taxpayers have been subsidizing for 21 YEARS!

Anything is cumbersome to use when you really don't want to use it. The Basic Pilot program is not un-like the CDIC computer that every police office uses when making a traffic stop. In less than a minute he knows about 32 pieces of info about you before he even walks up to your window. Including, SS#, crime record, address, birth info, etc. All you have to do is enter the information and hit the return key. Dunkin Donuts finds the Basic Pilot program easy to use....but they want to use this program to insure they hire legal workers.

Another issue. Most of the illegals do not use sophisticated false Id's. Many just make up SS# by picking random numbers. These are very easy to catch. One place one of my sons worked the illegals used phone numbers as basis for SS#. Kinda looks strange when the front numbers are the same as the area code they live in.
So, lets see how hard this really can be. You have a person that does not speak English, he is with a group that has one person that speaks English, they all want jobs together, and they have SS# that look like phone numbers. OK, Bush would think they are legal...I rest my case.