Thread: Few businesses verify documents of immigrant workers

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/breaking/0 ... mig_id.php

June 11, 2005

Few businesses verify documents of immigrant workers
The Associated Press

PHOENIX - Few employers are taking advantage of a little-known federal program that allows them to weed out workers who seek jobs using fake documents.
It's intended to fix one of the biggest problems in trying to crack down on illegal immigration, the use of counterfeit documents by illicit foreign labor.

The 8-year-old program allows employers to verify workers' employment eligibility by logging onto a government Web site and checking their documents against Social Security and immigration databases.

"I have an answer back within a minute," said Martin Thompson, vice president for human resources at Bar-S Foods Co., a Phoenix-based meat-processing company that has taken part in the program since 1998.

Nationally, just 4,385 employers are participating, said Chris Bentley, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program.

That is just a fraction of the 5.7 million companies counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002, the most recent data available.

In Arizona, 101 employers have enrolled of 96,000 companies counted by the census.

"I'm not sure most employers even know about this program," said Farrell Quinlan, spokesman for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

Most employers would be relieved to have a system that allowed them to easily verify a worker's eligibility, Quinlan said.

He said the current system places employers in a Catch-22 between unwittingly hiring illegal immigrants using fake documents and opening themselves to discrimination charges by turning away immigrant workers whom they suspect are using fake documents.

"Until there is better understanding of what is effective and what is available, participation will remain below what one might want," Quinlan said.

Congress created the program in 1997, rolling it out first in California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and New York, states with the highest numbers of undocumented immigrants, Bentley said.

Not mandatory in 1999, Congress expanded the program to Nebraska at the request of the state's meatpacking industry. It was expanded to all 50 states in December.

Participating in the program puts employers at a competitive disadvantage with companies that continue to hire illegal immigrants, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors tighter limits on immigration.

Unless it's mandatory, participation will remain low, he said.

Congress, however, has avoided making the program mandatory under pressure from business interests, he said.

NOTE this story is not too flashy, but it DOES contain good material. Things such as this (unnamed) program need to be brought FRONT AND CENTER

I almost fell down laughing when reading:

Not mandatory in 1999, Congress expanded the program to Nebraska at the request of the state's meatpacking industry. It was expanded to all 50 states in December.

However this makes PERFECT since:

Unless it's mandatory, participation will remain low, he said.

Congress, however, has avoided making the program mandatory under pressure from business interests, he said.

This may not (or may) be front page material here at ALIPAC, but we darn well need to have as much information about this as possible in the informational tools of this site. This WOULD be good information to try to hammer out far and wide.

Husker.

I think it needs to be sent to all of the members of congress so that they make it mandatory and end this REAL ID nonsense.