http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051 ... -1285r.htm

Groups target bosses to deter illegal hiring
By Peter Prengaman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 12, 2005

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- The white van eases into a liquor-store parking lot and is swarmed by 30 Hispanic day laborers who begin intense job negotiations with the driver. Within seconds, another wave of people descend on the van. Mostly white and middle-aged, they snap pictures as they cite federal labor laws.

"If you hire illegal workers, we'll put your picture on the Internet," warns Robin Hvidston, a property manager who became an immigration activist after being alarmed by the number of Hispanics she saw in her Orange County community.

"I hire the legals," the driver, who later identifies himself as Iranian, replies in broken English.
"But these people are not legal," retorts protester Gerry Nance, handing the driver tax and employment-eligibility forms. "You must check all this to be sure."

The driver shakes his head and drives off. The would-be workers return to the wall of the liquor store, disappointed but hopeful the protesters will leave so they can hook a day's worth of wages.

Frustrated by the federal government's response to illegal immigration and worried that illegal aliens are depressing wages, conservative immigration-reform groups are broadening their focus from the U.S.-Mexico border to the workplace -- in Southern California, Texas, Chicago, Virginia and elsewhere.

Their method: Take photos of construction bosses and anyone else picking up day laborers, then post the photos on Web sites (such as WeHireAliens.com and OperationShameOnYou.org), sometimes including home addresses and license-plate numbers. They also turn their footage in to immigration officials.

In Herndon, Va., members of the Herndon Minutemen have filed a suit against the Town Council for voting to set up a day-labor site with public money, said group founder George Taplin.

Mr. Taplin said the scheduled Dec. 19 site opening would give his group a clear target. "All we have to do is just stand there with our cameras," he said. "Nobody is going to show up."
The objective of such protests is twofold -- shame businesses into not hiring illegal aliens and force the government to enforce immigration law.

"We knew we would need a two-pronged approach to force the government to deal with this issue," said Chris Simcox, a former schoolteacher who co-founded the Minutemen, which began civilian border patrols in Arizona a year ago and is now focusing on employers. "Now we want to videotape, expose and embarrass the businesses breaking the law."
The tactics anger business owners, who are threatening lawsuits.

"These are just personal attacks, and they are all false," said Elias Zepeda, accounts manager for Strong Terminators, a termite company in Downey, Calif., that appears on WeHireAliens.com. "That's why we are talking to lawyers."

A dozen other businesses with pictures on such sites declined comment, though another owner who did talk briefly denied hiring illegal workers and said he was preparing a slander lawsuit against WeHireAliens.com.

While immigration authorities have made efforts to strengthen border security by hiring thousands more agents, illegal workers are rarely picked up on the job, and businesses hiring them are almost never fined.
An average of 200 workers nationwide were arrested each week during the 1990s, dropping to about eight a week by 2003, the last year of available data.

Conservatives alarmed by illegal immigration realize that going after businesses may be even more important than strengthening the border, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Study, which favors less immigration and stricter enforcement.

"These startup groups suggest an increasing sophistication in the immigration debate," Mr. Krikorian said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials evaluate the groups' phone tips and footage, but often their reports are not verifiable enough to prompt an investigation, said Bill Riley, ICE's chief of work-site enforcement.

"We'll ask them, 'How do you know they are illegal?'?" said Mr. Riley. "If they say, 'They look foreign,' that obviously isn't enough."
Though too early to judge their influence, camera-toting protesters do appear to limit the number of workers picked up on any given day.

During three hours at the recent morning protest organized by a group called the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition in Lake Forest, an Orange County city 50 miles south of Los Angeles with a large Hispanic population, only one employer ignored the protesters and picked up a day laborer.