Immigration Crackdown With Firings, Not Raids

[pampango]

Source: New York Times

LOS ANGELES — A clothing maker with a vast garment factory in downtown Los Angeles is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees in the coming days — more than a quarter of its workforce — after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents the workers presented when they were hired. After months of discussions with ICE officials, the company moved on its own to terminate the workers because, Mr. Schey said, federal guidelines for such cases are “in a shambles.” The Bush administration proposed rules for employers to follow when workers’ documents do not match, but a federal court halted the effort and the Obama administration decided to abandon it.

Immigration officials said they would now focus on employers, primarily wielding the threat of civil complaints and fines, instead of raids and worker deportation. The firings at the company, American Apparel, have become a showcase for the Obama administration’s effort to reduce illegal immigration by forcing employers to dismiss unauthorized workers rather than through workplace raids. The firings, however, have divided opinion in California over the fallout of the new approach, especially at a time of record joblessness in the state and with a major, well-regarded employer as a target.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, called the dismissals “devastating,” and his office has insisted that the federal government should focus on employers that exploit their workers. American Apparel has been lauded by city officials and business leaders for paying well above the garment industry standard, offering health benefits and not long ago giving $18 million in stock to its workers.

But opponents of illegal immigration, including Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a Republican from San Diego who is chairman of a House caucus that opposes efforts to extend legal status to illegal immigrants, back the enforcement effort. They say American Apparel is typical of many companies that have “become addicted to illegal labor,” in Mr. Bilbray’s words.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/us/30factory.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

---

The company must have about 7,000 total employees, since the 1,800 immigrants being fired represent more than 25% according to the story.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

1. evidently, there are 1800 job openings in LA . K&R n/t

[safeinOhio]

2. Pack up Detroit and Toledo, we're moving it Caleefoornia

[pampango]

3. Sounds like most of them will go to legal immigrants. It will be interesting to follow this.

"(C)ompany human resources managers had added new scrutiny to hiring procedures. But workers facing dismissal pointed to the line of job applicants outside the factory one recent day, who, like many of them, were almost all Spanish-speaking immigrants."

[liberal N proud]

4. Putting the focus where it belongs...

"Immigration officials said they would now focus on employers"

Those that violate the immigration laws by hiring illegal workers should be arrested.

[pampango]

6. The problem, at least, in this case seems to be proving that company knew the workers

were "illegal".

"The employees being fired from American Apparel could not resolve discrepancies discovered by investigators in documents they presented at hiring and federal social security or immigration records — probably because the documents were fake. Peter Schey, a lawyer for American Apparel, said that ICE had cited deficiencies in its record keeping, but the authorities had not accused the company of knowingly hiring unauthorized workers. A fine threatened by the agency was withdrawn, Mr. Schey said."

[elleng]

10. Peter Schey a real good guy!

http://www.centerforhumanrights.org/staff/peterresumen

[greengestalt]

5. One thing I agree with the "Right Wingers on"

Notably that "Savage" guy...


The numbers of "Unemployed" are almost always similar to the numbers of "Illegal Immigrants". Now, since both figures are tweaked, that's not absolute, but something to consider is this:



Get rid of illegals by prosecuting those that hire them. That frees up tons of jobs that even in a lousy economy the "Free Market" would then force wages higher because there is a need and someone is able to fill it, but not desperate or pushed out by illegal competition!


Unlike the "hate speech" they try to project against "leftists", I am all for people working to eat and live indoors. I simply want to make sure that anyone willing to work has a job and that job at worst pays enough to get by.

[pampango]

8. Wow, I didn't realize that the RW'ers were connecting all of our unemployment to illegal

immigrants like that. Thanks for the heads up.

Wait til ol' Lou Dobbs get a hold of that theory. "All of our unemployment is caused by foreigners" here illegally.

[greengestalt]

13. The "Free Market"

It's a fairy tale, of course.
Try selling drugs, or even starting a tea house and deal with all the laws and taxes.


But the most important thing, the part they always say exists when it works for them, is "Supply and Demand".


If someone needs something and another can supply it, the price is therefore determined (outside all other factors) by the person's need to buy and the others need to sell.


In labor, notice how the root problem is increasingly the lack of jobs and poor wages paid for said jobs.


That is because "Outsourcing" and "Illegal Labor" are used to compete with legal American workers. The outsourcing often costs more, but "Tax breaks and subsidies" make up the difference. And Illegal labor is often ignored by police. Therefore, a "Cheap" source of labor out-competes people wanting real wages. This sends ripples out into the larger economy, including people getting scared and spending less, causing more businesses that are small to go out of business and large ones to scream for more bailouts. They believe in "Supply and Demand" which is why they manipulate it to make it work for them.


If illegal labor is ended, and "Tax breaks and subsidies" for companies that export jobs are removed, there will be a gaping black hole of jobs going a-beggin and only a limited amount of people to fill them. Forget able bodied, they'd be out of them so fast, women in wheelchairs, retarded, etc. would be doing the menial stuff and paid well. The big businesses would face collapse, but be eaten up by smaller ones now able to compete. Prices would be higher, but wages also would be bid higher. And those with intelligence and drive could actually "Get ahead".



But I'm not a "Right Winger". I loathe them for they are just parasite liars. They want NONE of my last paragraph, except to use as a lie. They want an economy full of poor desperate people and a few ultra rich, they just fantasize they can be "Elevated" if they kiss up hard enough or back stab their way up to the top.

[NewAgeThinker]

7. Model Americans

Since the income tax is unconstitutional and most illegal immigrants don't pay income tax I guess they are Model Americans!

We "legals" could learn alot from them apparently!

[elleng]

9. The company's attorney, Peter Schey, has been doing the right thing forever!

I studied with him years ago.

http://www.centerforhumanrights.org/staff/peterresumen

[pampango]

15. That's cool that he is such a good person and you actually know him. n/t

[Stumbler]

11. Finally! We're focusing on the real culprits

I used to grind my teeth when I heard * say "there were jobs some Americans just aren't willing to work." The truth is there are some wages some Americans just aren't willing to work for. Kudos to American Apparel for paying decent living wages, and for taking the initiative to provide jobs for those who can show proof of citizenship. But there are many other employers who ought to be investigated for hiring illegal immigrants simply because they know they can pay them slave wages to keep the bottom line nice and fat. And congrats to the Obama administration for focusing on the employers, not the employees. At the end of the day, those illegal immigrants are looking fo the same thing lawful citizens want: a reliable, good-paying job that can support and sustain their families. Take those job opportunities away, and they'll find somewhere else to go, or they'll get in line to become nationalized.

[Vattel]

12. Too bad.

Immigrants need jobs too. I don't care whether they are legally employed or not. I care whether they can feed themselves and their families. That's not to say that we should simply "tear down the borders." But maybe the current half-assed approach to preventing illegal immigration is not so bad. We have a much stronger safety net here than, e.g., Mexicans have in Mexico. If poor Mexicans can't sneak into the U.S., many will suffer much worse consequences than most Americans suffer in virtue of being unemployed.

[mamaleah]

14. You must not know any unempoyed or underpaid Americans.

Many are having a hard time feeding their families too.

Greedy employers paying illegal immigrants well below industry standards and the illegals that take the jobs are despicable. Thanks to the employers, wages in many industries are artificially depressed.

But hey, I guess it's a-ok with you as long as an illegal immigrant has a job. Poor Mexicans are the problem of the Mexican government. We should be trying to help our poor first.

[Indy Lurker]

16. In Illinois, valid documentation runs about $700

Or at least that's what I'm told.

You can hire someone with documents that appear legal, check with SS and have it come back good, only to get a call 6 months later that the same SS# is being used 1,200 miles away.

The employee swears their documents are good, and sometimes claim to be a victim of identity theft.

I offer to let them use the phone as much as they need on company time to straighten it out, and give them 1 week to bring in some kind of evidence to support their claim. On the sixth workday (one week) they don't show up, and we never hear from them again.

This has happened 4 or 5 times.

[pampango]

17. Very interesting. Do you have any experience with E-Verify, the DHS/SSA program to verify

whether an applicant is legally authorized to work in the US? Does it work well in practice?

I can see that it would be difficult to prosecute employers who make a good faith effort to verify an applicant's work authorization, unless there is a reliable verification system that they can use.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

18. I'm not the previous poster, but I manage HR for a construction

project in southeastern NC and we use E-Verify, not to mention that I have used it before as an immigration professional. Since I deal with construction workers, there have been quite a few prospective hires whose documentation was patently fake, including one with a bad replica of a green card indicating his nationality as "Punjabi."

So far, E-Verify has worked well. One prospective hire whose social security card felt weird in my hands (though I have to assume that, evidence to the contrary, it is a legit document and feeling weird in my hands does not automatically disqualify the hire) indeed came back as a tentative non-confirmation (meaning that either the number didn't match up or the data was wrong). By law, the hire was given the paperwork to contact the Social Security Administration within a reasonable amount of time, during which it is against the law to fire the employee or reduce his hours (and indeed he got paid for that time). He stopped showing up to work and was never heard from again.

Now, the definition of 'good effort' in verifying documentation is a bit wide. Since I have been an immigration professional for quite some time, there are several tell-tale signs that I recognize that not many people who make fakes would know. For one, there are various identifying tidbits that can easily be checked on a purported green card, for instance, one of which is a case number assigned by USCIS which is the basis upon which the green card is granted. There are only five USCIS centers that issue such green cards and they have distinctive three-letter indicators. A receipt number always begins with these three letters, then it is followed by numbers in a xx xxx xxxxx pattern (for a total of 13 characters) in which the first two xx are the year the petition was approved (i.e., 09 or 05). Therefore, if one shows me a green card which does not match the above, then I know I have a fake. That is one way to check.

Of course, the majority of HR people are not required to be document examiners but it certainly helps to know what's fake and what isn't.

[pampango]

19. Thanks for the insight. "(T)he majority of HR people are not required to be document examiners".

That would seem to be a weak link in any effort to go after employers who hire undocumented workers. To hold these employers legally liable it would seem that HR people would have to become trained document examiners - like you :) (almost pseudo immigration agents) or they would be required utilize a government system (E-Verify, a national ID system, etc.) that would make authorization decisions.

The latter option seems to take much of the guesswork out of the process and make it easier to go after employers legally, if they continue to hire undocumented workers. You would have supposed experts (immigration agents/SSA staff) making work authorization determinations and HR people just implementing those decisions. If those HR people hired undocumented worker anyway, they wouldn't have much of a legal defense ("The documents looked genuine to me").

Again, thanks for your insight.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

20. I agree that E-Verify helps with the document identification

aspects. However, an HR person always has an 'out' by claiming -whether truthfully or otherwise - that the documents offered appeared to be genuine.

The only problem with E-Verify IMHO is that it is not 100% accurate (I think it's nearly 98% accurate) and that it takes a whole new dimension of patience to deal with government bureaucracies in case you get a tentative non-confirmation and you are trying to correct the information.

In cases of Hispanic workers, where two last names are used inconsistently (on one document, only one surname appears; on another document, two surnames appear), this can create some problems. Some of the tentative non-confirmations were for such prospective hires.

[Igel]

22. And that is precisely the problem.

I was in charge if I-9 verification for a small non-profit, then a small for-profit. I had no idea if the docs I looked at were legit. It's why there are so few prosecutions of employers.

In the '80s when the requirement to check ID was imposed by Congress, it imposed a requirement on itself: To require the production of, and fund, a database for the purpose of verifying employability. Of course, it's been politically inconvenient to do either, so Congress hasn't done it. In fact, when it was suggested that E-Verify be established and used, well, there was a major outcry--oddly, from many of those who said that we should go after employers, not employees.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

21. Fine employers for offenses - not taking ignorance as an excuse.

If employers are fined and being "fooled" is not a valid excuse to dodge fines then they will do the work themselves.
Make the fines stiff. The only thing a business recognizes is money and the impact on their bottom-line. Fight illegal employment.
It can be relatively cheap for an employer to hire some kind of worker documentation analyst rather than pay fines.

If Immigration set up a certification system for worker documentation analysts and standardized a verification system to process/analyze documents, the immigration problem could be solved by companies using these national databases and certified immigration-checkers. You cant physically stop illegals from coming to the US, period. Take away their desire to come here. No jobs for illegals means no opportunity and no point in even becoming an illegal worker.

[Igel]

23. No, it is often not cheap.

I was a part-time employee at a start-up. Now, they could have hired somebody who was a specialist, but could the owner really afford the additional $30k/year that person would have charged, just to be able to say that the four--count them, four--employees had legitimate IDs?

Or she could have gone to a consultant. But that's not what the law says, and to outsource responsibility would be an equally good dodge: "Gee, your honor, but Mr. Ivanov here said that Ivan Petrov's ID was valid." In other words, ignorance still is a good excuse, esp. when Ivanov wouldn't be responsible for doing anything wrong. Unless we set up a certification process, then have professional accrediting organizations. Right.

I've said before, Congress committed in the mid-80s to set up precisely such a system. They balked at every opportunity--and if the administration was going to set it up, there was a very active network of advocates arguing against it. Even last year, there were people up in arms at the idea of E-Verify.