Thread: Illegal immigrants being fired

Illegal immigrants being fired in face of federal crackdown in New Jersey.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf ... thispage=1

Illegal immigrants being fired in face of federal crackdown

Monday, January 21, 2008
BY BRIAN DONOHUE
Star-Ledger Staff

For six years, Modesto Roque went to work at the sprawling Silver Line window factory in North Brunswick -- a union job with health insurance and wages that started at $7.50 an hour and rose to $9.25.

No one, he says, ever asked about his Social Security number, a bogus ID he used to get hired in 2001.

Roque says a former co-worker at another job gave him the number to use when he first arrived in the country. "I don't know if it's false or illegal," he said. "But I applied (at Silver Line), they accepted it and I was off and working."

But Roque's cover was blown last year when the company was sold and the new owners, Andersen Corp., began auditing personnel records and discovered his Social Security number did not match any on file with the federal government. Roque was given two months to fix his paperwork -- an impossibility, he says, given his status as an illegal immigrant -- and was fired in November.

In all, more than 230 workers at the Middlesex County factory have been fired in the past three months as part of the audit, according to the union that represents them, Teamsters Local 97.


'THIS IS THE FUTURE'

The Silver Line firings are part of a growing trend in which employers are purging unauthorized workers to avoid a fledgling immigration crackdown by the U.S. government, according to immigration attorneys and experts.

"I think this is the future," said Cynthia Lange, a San Francisco immigration attorney whose firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Lowey, has offices in New York and Iselin. "Companies are looking internally and they want to be the first ones to look at it before they are like sitting ducks."

The number of workplace raids and prosecutions remains small and there have been no recent major prosecutions of employers in New Jersey, home to an estimated 430,000 illegal immigrants. Nonetheless, cases like the 2006 sweep of six Midwestern meat processing plants in which managers of the Colorado-based Swift & Co. were charged criminally, have struck fear in the hearts of employers -- especially companies like Andersen, with name brand reputations at stake.

Andy Carr, director of marketing at Silver Line's Route 1 plant, would not divulge how many people have been fired by the company, which bills itself as the nation's largest manufacturer of vinyl replacement windows and patio doors. However, he did say, "there's a good chance that if we found someone with a mismatch, if we were required by law to let them go, we would do so."

The firings also have offered a glimpse of how unions, workers and employers might adapt to a new business climate in which authorities no longer ignore illegal immigrant labor, as they have largely done for years.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf ... thispage=1

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