http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...32103017.html?sub=ARU.S. Tweaks Proposal On Illegal WorkersEmployers Could Get Warnings in June
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 22, 2008; Page A03
The Bush administration yesterday renewed its drive to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal immigrants by slightly altering an earlier initiative stalled by a federal judge since last September.
If the new proposal satisfies the court, the government could begin warning 140,000 employers in writing as early as June about suspect Social Security numbers used by their employees and force businesses to resolve questions about their identities or fire them within 90 days.
The result could intensify an economic and political debate over the administration's immigration policies in the months leading up to November's elections for president and Congress.
The mailings, known as "no-match" letters, were enjoined by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco while he hears a lawsuit brought by a wide-ranging coalition of major American labor, business, farm and civil liberties groups.
The plaintiffs, including the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Civil Liberties Union, allege that the plan will cause major workplace disruptions and discriminate against legal workers, including native-born Americans.
A systematic effort to wean the U.S. economy off an estimated 8.7 million illegal workers has long been blocked by economic interests and civil rights concerns. But the Bush administration considers that effort the linchpin of its immigration enforcement efforts.
"We are serious about immigration enforcement," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a brief written statement yesterday. "The No-Match Rule is an important tool for cracking down on illegal hiring practices while providing honest employers with the guidance they need."
The 44-page proposal released yesterday makes mostly technical changes to the administration's initial proposal. It includes a statement about the regulation's impact on small businesses, as required by a 1980 law. According to DHS, compliance will cost companies with fewer than 100 workers $3,000 to $7,500 overall, while it will cost larger companies $13,000 to $34,000. But these estimates do not include the cost of firing and replacing workers who lack legal documentation.
"DHS does not believe that the direct costs incurred by employers . . . would create a significant economic impact" on most companies, the department stated.
Opponents said the proposal makes no substantive changes to a plan that Breyer in October wrote would have "severe" effects and produce irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers. Lawyers familiar with the plaintiffs' case said they expect to battle the department in the rulemaking process and the courts through the summer.
Critics have noted that the Social Security Administration's inspector general has concluded the database used to cull suspicious numbers contains erroneous records on 17.8 million people, 70 percent of whom are native-born U.S. citizens. Even if the actual error rate of no-match letters is far lower, labor leaders say that unscrupulous employers will use the rule to burden or harass anyone who looks or sounds foreign.
"It's an attempt to justify the fundamentally flawed database without actually fixing any of the problems," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU immigrants' rights project.
Angelo I. Amador, director of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the DHS glossed over the true costs. "It keeps the questions before the judge the same. I would have been more concerned if they had come up with a big study" detailing the broader impact on businesses, he said.
God Bless America and everyone else!
