Questions of how far US crackdown can go
Analysts dubious on immigrant plan
A new Homeland Security plan to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants is being billed by federal authorities as a sharp break from a longstanding policy of giving companies a slap on the wrist when they break the laws.
But immigration analysts say that real enforcement of the Homeland Security Department plan would require far more resources than the Bush administration has committed to the new push, and more political spine than it has shown previously.
As part of the program, announced Thursday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the agency will dedicate 171 agents of its 2,500 nationwide to investigate and take action against employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
But effectively combating what has become a widespread business practice would require the government to hire thousands of more investigators, to streamline methods for checking workers' legal status, and to show a new willingness to stand up to business interests, the analysts said.
''Nobody has bothered in 20 years to enforce these laws," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.
''With the number of monitors they've got," Sum said, ''they can only monitor a tiny fraction of the employers." Nationwide, an estimated 7 million undocumented employees work for hundreds of thousands of firms, Sum said.
The policy shift was announced as federal officials reported arresting 1,187 employees and seven managers of a national pallet manufacturing company. It signals a new era of immigration law enforcement, said David Palmatier, acting special agent in charge of the Boston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of Homeland Security.
The agency highlighted its decision to bring criminal charges against managers at IFCO Systems North America Inc., for knowingly hiring undocumented workers in branches across the country, including one in Massachusetts. In the past, such offenses were handled with administrative citations and small fines. The new criminal charges would carry jail terms of as long as 20 years.
''This is a dramatic departure," Palmatier said. ''It is a paradigm shift. We have to focus on getting people to avoid hiring people without the proper paperwork, and until employers take this seriously, we're going to have a problem."
The announcement of the new policy was made in the midst of a heated debate over immigration policy, and amid pressure from conservative Republicans.
Those who want stricter immigration controls accuse the Bush administration of looking the other way as businesses take on millions of undocumented immigrants. The renewed focus on workplace enforcement showed the extent to which the immigration debate has broadened from matters of national security and equity to questions of immigrants' impact on the job market.
Even those who welcomed news of the arrests questioned whether the Bush administration is serious. They saw the initiative as an attempt to blunt a more aggressive push by House Republicans on immigration policy.
''They did it once," Bob Casimiro, president of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, said of the IFCO raids. ''When I see them do it again and again and again, I might start to take them seriously."
A yearlong investigation of Houston-based IFCO's Pallet Management Services division found that company officials paid an employee to obtain fraudulent identity documents for other undocumented workers, and advised that worker, and others, on how to avoid discovery. That employee was reportedly an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Michael Ames, general manager of the IFCO plant in Westborough, was arrested, along with 20 undocumented workers from that branch of the pallet company. The workers came from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Brazil, among other countries, said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, Paula Grenier. Of the 20 arrested, five remained in the Plymouth County House of Correction yesterday, and 15 had been released pending deportation proceedings.
IFCO released a statement yesterday pledging to cooperate with the authorities, and said it had launched an internal investigation.
''The activities and attitudes outlined in the allegations are counter to everything we stand for at IFCO," the statement said. ''We have the highest respect for our nation's employment and citizenship laws and are committed to complying with them.
But the IFCO case appears more clear-cut than most, immigration policy specialists said. More routine immigration violations, they added, are more difficult to prosecute.
In the IFCO matter, investigators say they have evidence that employers were knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants: More than half of the Social Security cards used by the employees were fake, the investigators said, and the Social Security Administration had sent 13 letters to IFCO on the matter.
In many other cases, employers confronted with allegations of violations simply say they did not know their workers were undocumented. Part of the problem is that the requirements on employers are limited.
Companies must ask for a worker's Social Security number, and report it to the Social Security Administration. They are not required to establish that it is valid.
The plan outlined by Chertoff also calls for legislation to allow investigators to check Social Security numbers more quickly.
Few employers have been prosecuted, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration controls. ''We have seen a complete abandonment of that kind of enforcement," he said. ''If you wait for this kind of criminal conspiracy to show itself before you try to enforce the immigration laws, you're never going to get a handle on it."
Krikorian said the administration should undertake more audits of payrolls, much as the Internal Revenue Service audits businesses' compliance with tax laws. To do that, and to adequately patrol the border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would need to at least double the number of agents, he said. The body currently has about 2,500 enforcement agents.
''The numbers are paltry, no matter what," Krikorian said.
In the past, he said, the Bush administration backed off monitoring of employers after complaints from businesses.
''When they get complaints, will the president tell Chertoff to stop, or will they tell complainers to go jump in the lake?" he asked. 