UCONN
Daily Campus Newspaper

Employers Of Illegals Must Be Punished
Our Opinion
Issue date: 11/27/07 Section: Commentary

Millions of illegal immigrants are working in the United States under false identities and little has been done about it until now. Given the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants living in the States, Congress initially passed a bill that would punish employers of illegal immigrants by putting them in prison. However, they have since reduced the severity of the punishment. They revised the bill so that employers must fire workers within 90 days of discovering that they are illegal immigrants.

According to The New York Times, "the rule laid out procedures for employers to follow after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration, known as a no-match letter, advising that an employee's identity information did not match the agency's records."

Many immigrants use false identification and Social Security cards to become employed in the United States, which is a growing problem since the American unemployment rate is growing. Immigrants are taking the jobs that many diligent unemployed Americans could potentially have.

The revision of the bill is a better solution than the initial bill, which proposed mandatory prison sentences for employers. The revised bill gives employers a chance to fire or lay off illegal workers that they might not know are illegal immigrants, rather than being sentenced and punished immediately. However, if there is evidence of an employer abusing their workers or taking advantage of them in any way, the employer should be punished with imprisonment in a correctional facility.

Additionally, whatever the decision Congress makes in terms of punishment, whether it's a monetary fine or imprisonment, it needs to be executed uniformly - to both small and large businesses. Currently, punishment only seems to be affecting those in large businesses like factories. Smaller businesses, such as restaurants, do not seem to be affected by the new bill. This is highly unfair because employers in both large and small businesses are committing the same crime when they hire illegal immigrants. Some employers may not be savvy to the immigration status of their workers and unknowingly hire illegal immigrants. But they are also to blame because they should be doing background checks and checking references of the people they hire. If employers did that, they would find out early on in the application process whether or not a person is legally allowed to work in the United States.

Many businesses say that they welcome the new bill because it clarifies what they have to do to avoid immigration raids and to keep operating legally, according to The New York Times. This revised bill could potentially open up more jobs, and could certainly keep businesses from unknowingly operating illegally and help prevent abuse of immigrant workers.
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