U.S. offers olive branch to businesses in crackdown on immigrant hiring

Web Posted: 08/10/2007 09:30 PM CDT
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/st ... e4604.html
Hernán Rozemberg
Express-News Immigration Writer

Johnny GarcĂ*a saw it coming long before dozens of other employers with immigrant-heavy work forces realized it: The government is coming after you, so get ready.
But besides targeting employers who hire illegal workers, the government also is offering businesses an olive branch, and GarcĂ*a's firm became one of the first to grab it.

In exchange for meeting the Department of Homeland Security's "best practices" threshold, employers can become certified members of the ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers, or IMAGE, program.

ICE is the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security leading an employer crackdown that it formally announced Friday.

"You're never safe anymore," said GarcĂ*a, human resources director for Systems Painters and Drywall in New Ulm, about a two-hour drive east of San Antonio. "You need to do everything you possibly can to show you've got your records straight."

GarcĂ*a, the only Texas employer so far to receive IMAGE certification, estimated that about 85 percent of his 350 workers are immigrants. Since the mere perception of supporting illegal immigration could hurt business, he would rather not take any chances.

If for some reason immigration agents were to show up at his door, he would prefer that they gave a friendly knock instead of kicking it down.

In Washington, the agency rolled out its initiative to go after companies who routinely have ignored letters informing them some of their employees' Social Security numbers don't line up with those in government databases.

The move — employers could be fined as much as $10,000 per violation — coupled with an ongoing ramp-up of workplace raids producing criminal prosecutions, has instilled fear in the minds of formerly careless employers.

Criminal arrests skyrocketed from 25 in 2002 to 718 last year, while those nabbed on civil immigration charges jumped from 485 to 3,667 in the same four-year stretch.

But while maintaining a tough public image, the government quietly has been encouraging cooperation with concerned bosses.

One tool employers have tapped for a decade is the Basic Pilot Program, an Internet-based system showing whether workers' listed Social Security numbers match government databases. Word about the program spread gradually, but nearly 20,000 companies, including more than 1,300 in Texas, have signed up.

The IMAGE program goes further. After completing all requirements, the first nine "charter" members were revealed in January, including GarcĂ*a's painting company.

Under it, employers seeking to impress Homeland Security officials literally have to prove they have nothing to hide — starting by voluntarily opening their books. They must use Basic Pilot for all hiring, form a team to detect document fraud, and even set up an internal hot line for employees to anonymously report co-workers perceived to be working illegally.

To date, ICE has received more than 350 applications, said Pat Reilly, an agency spokeswoman. IMAGE is expected to eventually become the hiring standard for industries popular with illegal workers, such as agriculture, construction, landscaping and meatpacking, she said.

"It's our Good Housekeeping seal of approval, our ideal image of what an employer should be," Reilly said.

Even with such certification, no employer is immune from investigation. But cases against them would be hard to prosecute because they acted in good faith against knowingly hiring illegal workers, Reilly said, and any wrongdoing discovered during initial audits would not get them in trouble.

Critics of the program say that, crackdown or not, employers may want to consider whether it's a good idea to essentially become the government's immigration enforcement lackey.

The Basic Pilot Program already has proven unreliable because it can't pick up identity theft, and reports abound of cases involving legitimate workers who were wrongly targeted, said MĂłnica Guizar, employment policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, a migrant advocacy group in Los Angeles.

"IMAGE lumps together all worksite programs," Guizar said. "It's intended to simply hand over the responsibility and duty of enforcing immigration law to employers."

Even with training, employers cannot turn into experienced document fraud investigators — and the result will be discriminatory firings, Guizar said.

Labor unions complained that IMAGE will give ruthless employers more legal muscle to quickly weed out workers looking to unionize. They also pointed out that labor violations — federal law provides rights to all workers regardless of their immigration status — will continue since the program doesn't touch the issue.