Posted on 05/02/2012 5:17:41 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The Department of Homeland Security, continuing its crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants, has ordered hundreds of companies in recent weeks to submit their hiring records for inspection.
This year's first "silent raids" haven't been publicly announced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS agency that conducts them. But an ICE spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that as of March 29, the agency had notified 500 businesses "of all sizes and types" to turn over I-9 employment-eligibility forms and other documents for audits.
"These inspections will determine whether or not the businesses are complying with their employment-eligibility verification requirements," said Gillian Christensen, ICE deputy press secretary. "No one industry is targeted, nor is any one industry immune from scrutiny," she added. The government doesn't divulge the names of companies under investigation.
Since January 2009, the Obama administration has audited at least 7,533 employers suspected of hiring illegal labor and imposed about $100 million in administrative and criminal fines—more audits and penalties than were imposed during the entire George W. Bush administration. The latest penalty hit HerbCo International Inc., a big Washington state-based supplier of organic herbs, which agreed Tuesday to pay $1 million in fines for employing illegal immigrants and then rehiring some of them after an ICE audit last year.
President Barack Obama is walking a fine line as he turns up the heat on companies that hire illegal immigrants and at the same time courts Hispanic voters, many of whom oppose a crackdown. While the audits don't lead to the deportation of a firm's illegal workers, they all lose their jobs. Critics of the crackdown say it drives more immigrants to exploitative, off-the-books work. For firms, the audits can lead to deep losses in productivity, in addition to civil and criminal fines.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Must be election year.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
