Bush plans push on immigrant laws, fines
Senate rejected initiatives in June
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration plans today to announce a broad initiative to sharpen immigration enforcement, including measures to raise fines for employers who hire illegal workers, require federal contractors to use an employment verification system, and add thousands of agents at the southern border.
Other provisions will restrict the types of documents employees can use to prove their legal status and will speed up background checks for legal immigrants. Administration officials also intend to streamline an agriculture guest-worker program.
The 25 measures -- some new and some that expand on current policies -- come in addition to the expected announcement of a plan to crack down on illegal immigrants by forcing employers to fire workers with discrepancies in their Social Security information.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has signaled for weeks that the administration would take independent action to deal with illegal immigration after the Senate failed to pass broad immigration reform in June.
Chertoff alluded to the new enforcement tactics in a speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston on Wednesday, calling to it "tool sharpening."
"We shouldn't have a patchwork of laws. We should be doing a comprehensive federal solution, but we haven't got that thing done," Chertoff said. "What I can tell you is we will certainly use every enforcement tool that we have, and every resource that we have available, to tackle the problem."
Business groups expressed dismay at the proposals and suggested that they could hurt the economy, particularly in industries such as agriculture and construction, which are heavily dependent on immigrant labor.
Under the plan, the Department of Homeland Security will ask states to share driver's license photos and records with an electronic employment-verification system that federal contractors will be required to use.
