Hiring-rules enforcement nonexistent
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3332298
In Denver, it's been three years since any fine was imposed for failure to verify workers' immigration status.
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post Staff Writer
While Congress wrestles with new legislation to crack down on employers who hire illegal-immigrant workers, enforcement of an existing prohibition has all but ceased.
Not a single employer in the Denver area has been fined for three years, records show, and federal authorities have targeted only a handful of employers nationwide.
This week, experts on all sides of the intensifying national immigration debate agreed: Work- site enforcement will be crucial in efforts to deal effectively with growing numbers of illegal foreign-born workers.
"If I could do one thing in the area of immigration reform, it would be to stop employers from providing the magnet. Then we'd have much of this problem solved," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., leader of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
A 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border that Tancredo and a majority of fellow lawmakers demand, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, "is a symbol as much as it is a practical obstacle ...," Tancredo said. "I certainly believe we should have that symbol, but the real key is work-site enforcement."
Longtime federal immigration chief Doris Meisner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, called current work-site enforcement "a charade," a "wink-and-nod system" vulnerable to fraud and fakery.
The 1986 law that makes hiring illegal workers a crime "is an unworkable law because of the verification issue. There's no way for employers to know whether the documents they see are valid," she said.
"And they don't have a requirement to verify those documents. That has to be fixed," said Meisner, who ran the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Clinton.
"You have to have a way that's straightforward" - similar to credit-card verification using photo identification and Social Security numbers - to check workers, she said.
Establishing penalties and a database for screening workers "is an important step in developing a credible immigration system," said Marshall Fitz, advocacy director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
That group and Meisner contend work-site enforcement must be combined with bringing in more temporary workers to ensure U.S. economic competitiveness.
Even business advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor required work-site screening "as long as it is fast, reliable and accurate," chamber vice president Randy Johnson said. "We recognize that improved employer verification has to be part of reform."
Senate lawmakers now are expected to offer "guest worker" proposals. House lawmakers have passed broad enforcement- oriented legislation that would require employers to verify workers are legal and impose fines of $25,000 per violation.
Today, federal enforcers let companies police themselves. Under a nationwide pilot program, only 4,830 employers nationwide (131 in Colorado, 31 in Denver) voluntarily checked Social Security numbers against a federal database last year.
Federal enforcers also have failed for nearly a decade to issue guidelines on which identification documents employers should review, a Government Accountability Office investigation found.
Wide use of fake documents and identities complicates enforcement.
Government statistics show that workplace arrests of illegal workers nationwide decreased from 17,554 in 1997 to 159 in 2004.
Notices of intent to fine employers decreased from 865 in 1997 to three in 2004.
In Denver, no employer has been fined for three years for hiring illegal workers, said Carl Rusnok, regional Homeland Security spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigration officials blame their lagging enforcement of the current work-site law on post- 9/11 security priorities. Field agents focus on sensitive work sites: nuclear power plants, military bases and airports.
Now Homeland Security chiefs are beginning to "look at giving employers better tools to determine the legality of their workforce. Some of these things are going to be unveiled pretty soon," said Dean Boyd, national Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Washington.
"If employers don't take those steps," he said, "we are looking at what sanctions are available."
