Finally, culpable employers will face stiff fines
Friday, August 10, 2007
Now that the prospect for con gressional passage of immigra tion reform has dried up, the Bush administration has decided to take a novel approach in dealing with those who have entered the country illegally and are working at American companies: aggressive enforcement of existing laws.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to require employers to fire employees with phony Social Security numbers. For decades, The New York Times reports, the Social Security Administration has mailed "no-match" letters to employers with more than 10 workers whose numbers don't match, if they represent at least half of 1 percent of the company's work force.

This was intended to assist companies to address honest mistakes in recording Social Security numbers and names. But it has become all too clear that undocumented workers regularly use forged Social Security cards to obtain jobs and acquire credit cards and driver's licenses. Virtually nothing has been done about it.

But under rules expected to be released soon, employers will risk fines up to $10,000 for knowingly hiring illegals.

It's about time. If the government, under administrations of both political parties, had vigorously enforced laws to secure the borders and punish companies that hire those who entered the country illegally, we would not have 12 million or more undocumented immigrants today.

The dimension of the problem is further suggested by the expectation by Social Security that it will send out 140,000 no-match letters this year pertaining to 8 million workers. Not all of them are illegal, but they are not mostly the result of sloppy paperwork, either.

The planned crackdown could pose severe consequences for companies and industries that heavily rely upon illegals for their work force, with possibly broader consequences for the country, especially where such workers are critical to food production. But there is a right way and a wrong way to allow people into this country to work. It's time to get back to the right way. Enforcing the laws on the books is the obvious place to start.

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