Thread: Update!! Legal workers ONLY

http://www.boston.com/business/articles ... are_legal/


Dunkin' joins program to verify if workers are legal
Chain's use of database to fire employees who don't check out angers advocates for immigrants
By Lisa Kocian, Globe Staff | May 30, 2006

You may have already seen the signs popping up at your local Dunkin' Donuts shop: ` Breaking News Alerts The signs, which have begun appearing in shops around Boston, make public the company's participation, starting June 1, in a voluntary federal program that enables employers to quickly check the immigration status of new hires.

Dunkin' Donuts is requiring all of its franchisees to participate in the Basic Pilot Program, which allows employers to verify a worker's status using online databases from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

The company chose to participate in the program partly because it sometimes receives complaints from customers who assume its workers -- especially those whose first language isn't English -- are in the United States illegally.

Some advocates for immigrants dislike the program because they say the databases contain errors, which could lead to people being unfairly fired.

``There's just so many ways for immigration information to be misclassified, so until there are the right safeguards for a person to review the data that's in there, we're very concerned," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. ``The bigger point here is that we can pour all kinds of money and effort into enforcement like this, but unless we fix the immigration system we're never really going to fix the problem."

Dunkin' lets franchisees determine how to advertise that they participate in the program . The chain has about 5,000 franchise locations in the United States, including about 900 in Massachusetts.

The chain got involved because of ``the growing awareness of the hiring and employment of undocumented workers and the difficulty faced by employers for screening new hires within the confines of the law," Stephen Horn , chief legal officer for Canton-based Dunkin' Brands Inc., said in an e-mail.

In Massachusetts, where the program has been available since 2004, 187 companies are participating, according to Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is running the program with the Social Security Administration. He declined to disclose the other participating employers.

Across the country there are 6,200 employers participating at 25,000 different job sites.

The program is intended to remove the ``guesswork" from document review, according to the USCIS. Saucier said an employer can verify a new hire's eligibility through the databases rather than looking at a green card or other proof of work eligibility and decide if it is a legitimate document.

Participating employers must check on all new employees within three days of hiring, but cannot check before hiring and cannot check on current employees. Companies must post a notice about the program in a visible location.

If new workers are found to be ineligible for work, Saucier said, the employer would have to fire them but would not have to report them to immigration authorities.

The program could become mandatory if Congress passes legislation to that effect. US Citizenship and Immigration Services has requested $134.9 million, said Saucier, anticipating that possibility. (Some of the money would be earmarked for expansion of a similar verification system available to local and state governments.)

Saucier said there have been efforts to improve the program as problems have arisen. There is now an appeals process, for example, and the program is trying to improve accuracy and cut down on data entry errors, he said.

``We want to make this so it's easy for employers to use," he said.

Horn of Dunkin' Brands said the company was ``proud to employ people from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds," but acknowledged that it occasionally receives complaints from customers who assume ``that because there are employees whose first language isn't English that they might be illegal immigrants."

``Many of our franchisees in diverse areas know that having employees that speak languages of the local neighborhood in addition to English can be a key element in creating a hospitable environment," he said.

Lisa Kocian can be reached at lkocian@globe.com.

Some advocates for immigrants dislike the program because they say the databases contain errors, which could lead to people being unfairly fired.

Isn't it just dandy the type of excuses OBL's come up with.

I`m surprised the ACLU has`nt stepped in yet.