Vital employer sanctions get short shrift in border debate
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.08.2007

Federal lawmakers know that reducing the job magnet is critical to slowing illegal immigration, but that hasn't been the focus of immigration reform proposals considered so far.
Despite a consensus that stiffer employer sanctions are essential, the Senate and House immigration proposals this year have focused on what pleases the public and is palatable to politicians — border security.
The "comprehensive" legislation proposed perpetuates the nation's decades-old fixation by adding 11,600 Border Patrol agents, fencing and technology but no new agents for employer investigations.
That means illegal entrants motivated by the promise of better-paying jobs will continue to navigate their way through and around the blanket of security, swelling the illegal-immigrant population already estimated at 12 million.
"Border enforcement is one of the few, possibly the only, element of immigration policy that most everybody across all political lines agrees on and supports," said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the now- defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000 and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for comprehensive immigration changes.
"That is not nearly the case in regard to employer enforcement."
Enforcement goals
The debate in Congress to date has centered on a possible path to citizenship and an expanded temporary-worker program that would both be triggered by meeting certain border enforcement goals. There has been little or no discussion of employer sanctions or work-site enforcement.
"In this political climate, on immigration reform, you cannot do enough as far as border enforcement is concerned," Meissner said.
In theory, nobody disputes the importance of holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. In practice, it's another story.
The Border Patrol has 11,400 agents on the southern border and 13,350 total agents, with plans to have 18,000 aboard by the end of 2008. Customs and Border Protection has 5,069 officers and agriculture specialists at 43 ports on the southern border.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the agency responsible for interior enforcement, including employer investigations — has 5,500 special agents and 15,000 total employees with the equivalent (based on hours) of about 400 agents devoted to work-site enforcement. Officials told a congressional committee there were 325 as of April 2006.
Arizona ICE officials would not say how many of the 100 to 200 special agents they have are devoted to work-site enforcement, but based on the national figures, that translates to between seven and 14 agents.
Border-enforcement efforts under Customs and Border Protection — the agency that manages the Border Patrol and Customs port officers — will get about 22 percent of the $46 billion DHS budget in fiscal 2008, compared with just 11 percent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Within ICE, work-site enforcement has been a small portion of the agency's work. It remains so even as a renewed emphasis has produced more criminal and administrative arrests each year.
From 1997 to 2003, the number of completed employer investigations ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent of all completed cases, Homeland Security's yearbook of immigration statistics shows.
The agency made triple the number of criminal arrests at work sites in 2004-2005 as in the previous two years, but those still represented only 2 percent of all criminal arrests, figures reveal.
Work-site enforcement is a definite priority, but agents working on employer investigations are often pulled off to handle urgent cases, such as drop houses and extortion, in which the lives of illegal immigrants are in danger, said Alonzo Peña, Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge for Arizona.
The result is that illegal immigrants are much less likely to be arrested at a workplace or anywhere inside the country than at the border. In 2005, ICE detained and deported 102,034, while the Border Patrol found and removed about 1 million, DHS figures shows.
"Businesses right now are not fearing hiring illegal aliens," said Neville Cramer, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service special agent for 26 years and author of two books on the immigration crisis. "You have a better chance of hitting the Powerball lottery than getting arrested for hiring illegal aliens."
Others say the agency has at least put employers on notice.
"There is an awful long road to travel yet, but the fact remains, for illegal immigrants and at the employer level, there is a new element of uncertainty and fear that is entering into their daily lives," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute.
Political resistance
The political resistance to implementation of employer sanctions has been widespread from business lobbyists to immigrant-rights groups.
"We have been unwilling to disrupt this economic activity that these workers make possible," said Judy Gans, immigration-policy program manager at the University of Arizona's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.
The buildup at the border seems to please a public that doesn't understand the broad scope of illegal immigration, said Peña, of ICE.
"I think they see a lot and hear a lot about the Border Patrol and the interdiction," Peña said. "It's harder to identify what we do."
But the two-decade border buildup hasn't slowed illegal immigration. The number of apprehensions by the Border Patrol along the southern border has continued at basically the same level in the past decade despite a nearly threefold increase in agents and a budget that has more than doubled. And each year since 1995, the illegal-immigrant population has grown by about 500,000 people, according to the Pew Hispanic Center and the federal government.
Employer sanctions were a critical part of the Immigration and Reform Control Act 0f 1986, which made it illegal to hire unauthorized workers. But enforcement required that authorities must prove an employer "knowingly" hired an illegal worker.
A government-appointed commission in 1994 recommended that the president institute an employer-verification system and called reducing the employment magnet the "linchpin" to reducing illegal immigration.
Since then, a host of other reports from government and nongovernment agencies have recommended worker-verification systems, fraud-proof Social Security cards and more coordination among agencies to decrease the job magnet.
Critics say a strong business lobby has successfully turned back those efforts. Business supports the Border Patrol "because they know it doesn't work," said Cramer, the former INS special agent.
"It is easier to have a wink and a nod and have these people come through at the border," the UA's Gans said.
But businesses now appear willing to accept harsher sanctions in return for a guest-worker program that will ensure the supply of workers, said Papademetriou, of the Migration Policy Institute.
"They realize they've lost this round," Papademetriou said. "Their focus is going to be to make sure the process takes as long as it can possibly take."
"Knowingly" the key word
Creating a fear of hiring illegal workers will be difficult so long as the word "knowingly" remains part of the law, critics say. With the widespread availability and use of fraudulent Social Security cards and other documents and no reliable verification system, the provision makes it tough to prove a case.
Agents spent 16 months investigating Sun Drywall in Sierra Vista before arresting the company president and seven other managers on charges of conspiring with fraudulent-document makers to hire and protect dozens of illegal immigrants. During the investigation, agents arrested and deported more than 40 illegal immigrants working for the company.
The president and the managers have been indicted by a federal grand jury and are awaiting trial.
A 10-month investigation of Swift & Co., a meat-processing business, yielded the high-profile arrests of 1,297 workers, but only 274 were charged criminally and the rest were deported. The company has not been charged.
The investigation that led to arrests of 1,187 IFCO systems employees and seven current and former managers at 40 locations took a year.
"They are real hard cases to make because (it) is very difficult to show the 'knowingly' part," Peña said.

Staffing
• 11,443: U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling the southern border.
• 5,049: U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the 43 ports on southern border.
• 5,500: Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents devoted to interior enforcement.
• 400: approximate number of employee equivalents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents devoted to work-site enforcement.
Arrests
• 1,071,972: Border Patrol apprehensions on the Southwest border in fiscal 2006.
• 392,074: Border Patrol apprehensions in Tucson Sector in fiscal 2006.
• 3,667: arrests made by ICE agents at work sites in 2006.
• 718: criminal arrests made by ICE at work sites in 2006.
Budget
• 22: percentage of the fiscal 2008 DHS budget to go to Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol and port officers.
• 11: percentage of the fiscal 2008 DHS budget to go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for interior enforcement, including employer investigations.
Work-site enforcement
• 1 to 7: the percentage of completed cases by ICE from 1997 to 2004 that were employer investigations.
• 2: the percentage of total criminal arrests made by ICE agents in 2005 that were at work sites.
Source: Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security's yearbook of immigration statistics.

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