Posted on 12/18/2005 6:01:15 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
Change in work site enforcement policies means heavier penalties for violators
December 18, 2005 — For three decades, Victor Bocanegra has run GIRO Landscaping & Construction, offering services that include general lawn and garden care and building retainer walls for waterfront properties just about anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley.
It’s hard work and requires skilled laborers. It doesn’t always require proof of citizenship, Bocanegra suggested.
The San Benito resident admits he’s employed undocumented immigrants and says they’re paid the same as legal workers, above minimum wage.
And, in his 33 years in the lawn and garden business, he’s only been questioned by the government once.
“It’s not very common for them to go and check on the job site. You hardly see them,” said Bocanegra, who semi-retired last year.
Bocanegra’s argument is not unique.
“There are a lot of jobs that only the illegals do,” he said.
U.S. work site enforcement policies are meant to keep illegal workers from U.S. jobs.
Since 2002, work site enforcement — investigating an employer’s and his employee’s legal authorization to work in the country — has been under the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
Before then, work site enforcement was a practice of Immigration and Naturalization Services.
The handoff means a change in enforcement tactics, ICE spokeswoman Jaime Zuieback said, warning that employers should be aware that the switch would be from emphasizing fines to jail time.
“Fines were not a deterrent,” Zuieback said. “Companies really looked at them as a cost of doing business.”
Also, investigations have increasingly focused on what ICE calls “critical infrastructure facilities,” such as airports, seaports, nuclear and chemical plants and defense facilities, she said.
Operations like Bocanegra’s could go largely ignored as small potatoes in a larger pot.
“We’re placing our priority on illegal workers who have gained access to critical infrastructure work sites,” she said.
Despite suspected cases numbering in the millions, ICE churned out only 46 criminal convictions of employers for unauthorized alien investigations in 2004. In 2003 this number was 72, and according to ICE’s available statistics, since 1993, it never surpassed the 2003 high.
“That’s a staffing issue, and that’s a budget issue. They don’t have enough officials to adequately enforce it,” Colby Bower, policy coordinator for the Border Trade Alliance (BTA), said of work site enforcement by ICE.
The BTA is an organization including border cities and counties (such as Cameron) and private companies that promote trade.
“The government doesn’t want to be seen as the Big Brother crashing down on the doors of business because it hurts the economy,” Colby said.
“They know the bind the employers are in; they are aware of it,” he said, referring to the economics of competing amongst companies that employ undocumented workers.
Laws governing work site enforcement have no teeth by design, said Allan Wernick, an immigration lawyer, columnist and professor at Baruch College in New York.
“When Congress wrote the law, they wanted to make it such that it would be hard for employers to get caught,” Wernick said. “That’s the reason you don’t have very many convictions — there is not a huge amount of enforcement going on.”
Wernick cited the large number of undocumented immigrants, together with the relatively small number of agents to enforce the law as the main reason there are millions of undocumented workers in the country and only dozens of convictions.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonprofit research center, counted the undocumented population in the U.S. at 11 million, including more than 6 million Mexican nationals, as of March 2005.
“We prioritize our workload on a daily basis,” Zuieback said. “If we have a power plant in a community and we think there are illegal aliens there who could be vulnerable to exploitation by criminals or terrorists, that is going to be a very high priority.”
Zuieback said that, while no case is “off-limits,” ICE focuses on sites that pose the greatest threat to public safety, again citing critical infrastructure facilities.
The cases against employers can be difficult to make, she said, and can be very complex. Cases are initiated via tips from the public, in the course of other investigations and proactive sting operations, she said. ICE also works closely with the Border Patrol to initiate cases.
Once cases are investigated, prosecuted and convictions are meted-out, the penalties for employers are applied, which can include fines and prison time.
After these cases are made, the maximum civil penalty for a federal I-9 form violation is $1,100 per person, $11,000 for knowingly hiring an undocumented immigrant. I-9 forms are used by employers to determine the eligibility of potential employees to work in the United States.
Criminal penalties range from up to $3,000 per person hired and up to five years in prison.
But, obtaining maximum penalties isn’t easy.
“It’s not impossible for them to investigate or find a pattern of practice, but it’s not very easy,” said Wernick, an immigration lawyer. The standards to establish a pattern of practice are very high, he said, making the applicability of the penalties difficult.
“A simple one-time violation is not going to lead to a criminal conviction; there may not be a penalty at all,” Wernick said.
“You have to show that employer knowingly hired the workers. That’s a pretty high standard.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s three-tiered strategy to improve national security by returning all undocumented immigrants, reforming immigration laws and strengthening the border is key to ICE’s work site enforcement, Zuieback said.
“It’s an integral part of our mission, and it is an integral component of what we do in terms of both public safety and national security,” she said.
Wernick said border enforcement would be more important than work site enforcement, in the case that the government really wanted to assuage illegal immigration.
“If you are going to stop people from coming, you are going to have to do that at the border. In the interior, that is going to be very difficult.”
The government’s lax enforcement in non-critical infrastructure facilities may be partly due to economics, said Colby, of the Border Trade Alliance.
A labor shortage will be growing in the next 20 years, he said, leading to “massive” labor shortages, and pointing to the need for a broad immigration reform which includes a guest worker program.
This is particularly of concern since Mexico, the largest supplier of undocumented workers, is going to run out of workers to send to the U.S., and this will begin to be apparent in 15 years, said Ricardo Guerra Carrillo, the adjunct general director of the Institute for Mexicans in the Exterior (IME) in Mexico City.
Mexico’s National Population Council reported 400,000 Mexicans leave the country every year, the vast majority coming to the United States. However, Mexico’s population will get older and run out of working-age men and women to send abroad, Guerra added.
But immigration — both legal and illegal — is a “huge” component of the economy now and will be in the future, said Sylvia Allegretto, an economist from the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
“It is important now,” Allegretto said, “and immigration will continue to play an important role in filling up jobs here in the U.S.”
sicalderon@brownsvilleherald.com
Nationwide Convictions for Employing People Unauthorized to Work in the U.S. 1993-2004
These statistics reflect convictions for employers of unauthorized aliens, including criminal, administrative and auxiliary investigations. Before 2002 the enforcement fell under Immigration and Naturalization Services, after this time the responsibility was handed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the Department of Homeland Security.
1993 40
1994 11
1995 52
1996 48
1997 48
1998 48
1999 24
2000 49
2001 19
2002 25
2003 72
2004 46
*Source: Department of Homeland Security Yearbook of Immigration Statistics
Nationwide Border Patrol Apprehensions
These statistics reflect the nationwide apprehensions by the Border Patrol, for both the northern and southern border, including all nationalities.
2000 1,676,438
2001 1,266,213
2002 955,310
2003 931,557
2004 1,160,395
2005 1,188,977
*Source: Border Patrol
Penalties for Employers Convicted of Hiring Unauthorized Persons
This is the range of penalties that employers who are convicted of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants may face.
Civil Cases
*I-9, employment eligibility verification, violation: $110 — $1,100 per person hired
*Knowingly hiring or continuing to employ illegal aliens: $275 — $11,000 per person hired
Criminal Cases
*Engaging in a pattern of practice of knowing hiring or continuing to employ illegal aliens: up to $3,000 per person hired and imprisonment of up to 6 months
*Knowingly hiring 10 or more illegal aliens in a 12 month period with actual knowledge of unauthorized status: up to 5 years
*Source: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
I agree.
Exactly. Back in my twenties, I was in the Unemployment Office doing some business, and the clerk handed me a printout and asked me if I knew any of the people on the list. It was a list of about 10-15 people and I knew none of them. She then asked me to sign a form stating just that, and I asked her what it was about. She said that all those people were using my SS number!
You're right--that phone call to the SS office to find out that SS#555-55-5555 belongs to Mildred Smith and not Juan Javieriez is a simple and effective stop-gap.
He's full of it, let me add.
It all comes down to incentatives.
Great, now I'm gonna have to change the SS# I've been using. Thanks a lot. I think now I'm gonna use 123-45-6789!
And I suppose your telephone number is 867-5309???
;^)
No one needs to, one quick phone call (or Internet request) to Social Security can instantly tell if the person is legal to work here. Been in place for years, most maddening that they didn't even require this one simple phone call. Check out this program.
That statement should be on the front cover of every liberal print and news media in our country. I have been ranting this for years to our children, and here on FR.
Further, I have warned of our children procreating in having offspring.
Forty years, in retospect, America will be an unrecognizable entity.
For my wife and I? America already is unrecognizable entity from when we were children.
Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Montavoni, Henri Mannini, ....
Today, it's Tookie Williams, Michael Jackson, RAP, Hip-Hop, and the rest of the instant-gratification-generation who cannot even read a children's book or recite a poem.
You have a better chance of contracting the "Bird Flu" than seeing this happen.
Feingold (D - WI) believes there are only 60 squares on a chess board. I believe that most of our elected "officials" never graduated from grade school. Who was the idiot who asked if the lunar lander on Mars ever caught up to the American Flag on Earth's moon. Talk about dolts from dummie-land....
Yep...8 Million new cockroaches since Senor' Jorge got elected too...
GW has not fulfilled his oath...and his approval polls are more than anything a reflection of the conservative base pissed off about the border.
El Jorge Bush has failed on immigration. Bush disgusts me...
Maybe cut and amnesty for the illegals who blow the whistle? :)
"Maybe cut and amnesty for the illegals who blow the whistle?"
NO!
No jail time and a quick deportation would be more than enough compensation.
Here is the way I see it. When I hear a contractor use the line that US citizens will not do the work....Complete bull. The real story is the guy that I am going to pay 2600 bucks to next week for concrete work is going to use illegals becuase he can pay them S**T and they won't complain and he gets to pocket the differance.
First, why should we put legitimate businessmen in the law enforcement business? Isn't that what we have a Border Patrol for?
How are businessmen supposed to succeed when our "law enforcement" (that's right, those are "sarcasm quotes") personnel cannot?
Second: Visiting CNN a few minutes ago, I saw the most incredible Western Union ad:
It showed an obviously-hispanic male, and the title was,"Doing well? Use our money orders to send money to the folks back home!"
I say, ban overseas money-orders by anyone who cannot prove U.S. citizenship.
Not a green card - citizenship!
Next: No more "birthright citizenship". A child born here must have at least one U.S.-citizen parent, and BOTH must be here legally.
That's right: two parents would be required as well. No more instant welfare babies!
You might want to double check his Workers Comp policy. Call his broker to see that's it's in effect. In most states if the contractor isn't paid up, you get to cover the claim. Could save a lifetime of grief.
There are those who assume that everyone on this planet assume that they assume what certain folks are in the discussion process. The militry folks like the jargon as well.
As a techie, I can throw around thousands of jargon. Do I get MPA
(my point across)?
IDK...
Series, too much ego here.
LCD (Lowest Common Dennominator) is the best asset of communication.
Then again there is RAID, DASDm MIPS, GIGS, RPGIV, PLI, APL, OS400, AS400, SAP, JDE, AM&FM, AC/DC, and 123.
I won't associate with people that talk or write in alphabet soup!
If they can't use complete words and english, screw them!
My number is Beechwood 45789,
(you can call be up any ole time.)
NOIGIT. TFTC.
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