Last-ditch bid to halt new crackdown on illegals
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, April 26, 2008

As Bush administration officials prepared Friday to finalize rules cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants, business and civil rights advocates continued to hammer the plan, calling it an expensive and ill-conceived attack on legitimate workers and their employers.

The Department of Homeland Security closed a 30-day window Friday for public comments on a new version of its "no match" rule. Agency officials hope the new language will persuade a San Francisco federal judge to lift an injunction imposed in October and allow the regulations to go into effect.

The no match rule would give employers 90 days to resolve discrepancies in their workers' Social Security numbers, plus an additional three days for an employee to submit a new, valid Social Security number, before firing employees who can't comply.

Hiring undocumented workers has been illegal for two decades, but until now, employers were not held liable for fraudulent documents. Under the no match rule, employers who fail to comply could face fines or criminal penalties.

"This is an important tool for employers to be sure they're acting in good faith and an important tool of immigration enforcement," said Veronica Nur Valdes, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocacy groups pointed Friday to an analysis released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggesting that if the no match requirements take effect, they would cost American businesses more than $1 billion a year and could force up to 65,000 legally authorized workers out of their jobs.

"It's the equivalent of a massive tax on small business and an attack on U.S. workers in an especially perilous time for the economy," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

Critics of the no match rule say they fear legal workers could get caught in a maze of bureaucracy trying to correct Social Security errors and end up being fired by employers before they can prove they are authorized to work.

But advocates of stricter immigration enforcement aren't buying those arguments.

"This is not an unmanageable burden. ... It would be an extraordinarily useful tool in deterring illegal immigration," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. If undocumented immigrants can't hold onto jobs, they are more likely to leave the United States, he said.

Critics of the no match rule disagreed. The Chamber of Commerce analysis, conducted by public policy analyst Richard B. Belzer, predicted that more unauthorized workers would enter the underground economy. He also predicted the rule would increase identity theft as illegal immigrants became more desperate for legitimate Social Security numbers.

Once the Department of Homeland Security finalizes its revised regulations, the agency plans to ask U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer to lift the injunction on the rule, said Nur Valdes. If that doesn't happen, the agency will go forward with an appeal pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

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