Thread: U.S. to target employers for aiding illegal workers

U.S. to target employers for aiding illegal workers

by Josh Meyer and Anna Gorman - Mar. 30, 2009 10:09 PM

Tribune Washington Bureau .

WASHINGTON - Stepping into the political minefield of immigration reform, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will soon direct federal agents to emphasize targeting American employers for arrest and prosecution over the illegal laborers who sneak into the country to work for them, Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday.

The shift in emphasis will be outlined in revamped field guidelines issued to agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, or ICE, as early as this week, according to several officials familiar with the change in policy.

It is in keeping with comments that President Barack Obama made during last year's campaign, when he said past enforcement efforts have failed because they focused on illegal immigrants rather than the companies that hire them by the hundreds.

"There is a supply side and a demand side," said one Homeland Security official. "Like other law enforcement philosophies, there is a belief that by focusing more on the demand side, you cut off the supply."

Another Homeland Security official said the changes come as a result of a broad review of all immigration and border security programs and policies that Napolitano launched in her first days in office. "She is focused on using our limited resources to the greatest effect, targeting criminal aliens and employers that flout our laws and deliberately cultivate an illegal workforce," that official said.

The Homeland Security officials emphasized that the department will not stop conducting sweeps of businesses while more structural changes to U.S. immigration law and policy are being contemplated.

The new guidelines also will hold agents to a higher standard of probable cause for conducting raids in the first place, out of concern that at least one recent raid in Washington state and another pending sweep in Chicago were based on speculative information that illegal workers were there, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss policy changes that have yet to be announced.

New guidelines would mark a fundamental shift away from what was happening toward the end of the Bush years, said Doris Meissner, who served as commissioner of ICE's predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, during the Clinton administration.

The law governing employer enforcement requires proof that a business knowingly hired illegal workers. So without an effective way for employers to verify workers' status, Meissner said, "it is very easy for that knowingly' to be a big loophole."

Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, said the Bush administration also vowed to go after employers but rarely did so. In later years, it drew fierce criticism by conducting large-scale raids at businesses across the country aimed almost entirely at workers.

The Clinton administration, in contrast, used a combination of laws to go after employers for smuggling, violating labor laws or engaging in criminal conspiracy, she said. "At the end of the day, when you make cases like that, you have more impact."

Both sides of the issue have been buzzing with anticipation of major changes in immigration policy since Obama's election, particularly since he tapped Napolitano, a former border state governor and prosecutor, to head Homeland Security.

Conservatives have warned that the administration will ease enforcement efforts against illegal workers, resulting in more of them coming into the country and competing for jobs held by American workers. Immigrant rights groups have complained that the lack of reform measures to date suggests the White House was backing down from campaign pledges to curb work-site enforcement efforts. Those concerns were ratcheted up dramatically when ICE agents swept into a manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Wash., in February and arrested dozens of people on suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

Napolitano suggested to Congress that she was unhappy with the raid and that she would "get to the bottom of this."

But, she added, "In my view, we have to do workplace enforcement. It needs to be focused on employers who intentionally and knowingly exploit the illegal labor market."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... tml?&wired

Smoke and mirrors. On the outside they give all appearences of actually doing something so that it satisfies the American public and they back off, while behind the scenes they work on pushing Amnesty through. It's like "deja vu all over again!"

Story title should read:

U.S. to target employers for aiding illegal workers ......... and will ignore illegal aliens

We probably should let the Day Laborer Centers know!

This would work IF E-Verify was a mandatory law which it is not so I see it as a stall tactic until Amnesty is tried again in Congress.

Most employers will stop hiring illegal aliens the very first time that you put them in prison.

When illegal aliens are no longer able to find a job many of them will return home on their own.

They found a way to get here, and they can find a way to get home too.

Captainron, that is the same idea that popped into my head, but I think those who run day labor centers just want to make sure the illegals are comfy so they have the energy to accost people in parking lots for jobs. As far as who their clients are in the centers, that is a matter for the feds, they will say. Napolitano, from what I have read, seems to have been so wishy-washy over illegals in Arizona, it is hard to pin her down.
My question is, how can you prove an employer is knowingly hiring illegals without finding out who the employees are? IMO, this is tackling the same gushing wound from another angle, but with the same results.
If there are no more workplace raids, those illegal employees will disappear into the mist, probably into another day labor center so they can harass customers of Home Depot and Lowes.

Probably DHS will go after the big employers--at least enough to make some headlines. The small fry will slip through. But I am not averse to trying to put a scare in the DLC.s.

What this adds up to is a stalling tactic.