Congress Must Fix Before Expanding Employment Verification Programs Programs Should Only Be Discussed in Context of Wider Reform

July 23, 2009

Washington D.C. - As Congress holds hearings and introduces plans for expansion of an Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS) like E-verify, it has become clear that some version of employment verification will be part of comprehensive immigration reform. However, much remains to be done before EEVS is ready for prime time. The following is a statement from Mary Giovagnoli, Director of the Immigration Policy Center:

"E-Verify received a lot of attention on Capitol Hill this week, but the radically different approaches to its implementation considered by Congress reinforces our observation that it is not ready for prime time. The Senate Immigration Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, held a hearing that looked at an expanded E-Verify program as part of an integrated component of comprehensive immigration reform. In contrast, Congressman Heath Shuler announced the reintroduction of a previously failed bill, the SAVE Act, which calls for mandatory expansion of E-Verify without fixing our broken immigration system.

Senator Schumer understands that we can't implement a mandatory electronic employment-verification system like E-Verify in its present form, without serious protections and revisions to it. While there remains significant disagreement over what those protections should look like, there is a clear understanding that the gravity of implementing a mandatory program that has the potential to affect every individual's ability to work - citizen or immigrant - requires thoughtful consideration and analysis.

We mustn't forget that employment verification affects every person who works in the U.S. - not just undocumented immigrants - and Congress must move forward carefully. Any expansion of E-Verify must be part of wider reform which requires current unauthorized workers to legalize their status and gives employers legal channels through which they may hire needed legal workers. Attempting to implement a mandatory E-Verify program without such reforms, as Congressman Shuler envisions, is a recipe for disaster.

Mandatory E-verify could put thousands of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants at risk of losing their jobs, will be expensive for small businesses at a time when the economy is weak, places additional pressures on the already overburdened Social Security Administration, and does not guarantee that undocumented workers will not get jobs. Every effort must be made to ensure that a new and expanded EEVS program will actually serve its intended purpose."

View IPC's Fact Check on the Key Components of Employment Verification Systems:

* 10 Key Components for Workable and Effective Electronic Employment Verification System, (IPC Fact Check), July 23, 2009

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For press inquiries contact Wendy Sefsaf at 202-507-7524 or wsefsaf@ailf.org

Nervous Employers Turn to ID Check for Workers

By Maria Sacchetti Globe Staff / March 6, 2009

A federal system that lets employers check the legal status of their workers is soaring in popularity across the country, growing by 1,000 companies a week, fueled by anxiety over workplace raids and uncertainty over the future of the nation's illegal immigrants.

Get a state-by-state breakdown of E-verify searches for the past three years.

Leading the trend are Arizona and Mississippi, which have made the system mandatory for all employers, and 10 other states that require it for state agencies and contractors. But the system is also ballooning in states where it is optional, such as California, Texas, and Massachusetts.

In Massachusetts, enrollment quadrupled to 1,712 businesses over the past three years, from Boston's exclusive Algonquin Club to the Papa Gino's restaurant chain to the law firm Ropes & Gray, according to a list provided by the federal government. Individual employers and private households may also use the system: Ann Romney, wife of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, signed up last year after a Globe investigation found that the family had twice hired a landscaping company that used unauthorized workers.

Known as E-Verify, the system is up for renewal in Congress and igniting debate across the United States. Federal officials are waging a publicity campaign to turn the once-obscure service into a household name, while advocates for immigrants say it contains erroneous information that could lead to some workers being unfairly denied jobs.

But employers, rattled as business owners are going to jail and paying million-dollar fines for hiring illegal workers, say the system offers peace of mind.

"God knows we check everything," said Lassaad Riahi, general manager of the Algonquin Club, which signed up for E-Verify more than a year ago. "We don't want to hire anybody that doesn't have the proper identification or the proper IDs or the proper number or the proper something."

Nationally the number of businesses in the system has risen 10-fold since 2006, to more than 113,000 this week, with checks on 6.6 million workers last fiscal year, double the year before.

Congress established E-Verify, a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, in 1996 as a pilot program for a handful of states.

But the system expanded significantly in 2007, amid national debate over illegal immigration, and government officials predict that it will become even more widespread if Congress legalizes the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

All federal agencies began using E-Verify in 2007, including the office of Barack Obama when he was a US senator, and it will be required of all federal contractors starting in May.

E-Verify works like this: Companies and individual employers must first enroll in the free system, pass a tutorial, and sign a memorandum of understanding with the government. Then they enter all new employees' Social Security numbers and other information into an Internet program to verify their identities. The system searches federal databases and typically confirms the worker within seconds.

An unconfirmed employee has eight days to appeal. Companies can use the system for new hires only, under the rules, and do not automatically flag rejected workers for deportation because it is not used for enforcement.

Some employers are forced to use E-Verify - Rhode Island mandates it for state agencies - while others sign up voluntarily. Still other companies have signed up after something went wrong.

Eagle Industries started using the service in New Bedford after buying Michael Bianco Inc., the leather-goods factory raided by immigration agents two years ago. Former Bianco owner Francesco Insolia was recently sentenced to a year in prison and a $1 million fine.

Dunkin' Donuts made use of E-Verify mandatory for all stores in 2006 after a Connecticut franchise holder, Jose Calhelha, was arrested and charged with illegally hiring Portuguese workers. He was later sentenced to 10 months in prison, two years of probation, and a $1 million fine.

Business executives say the system is working overall, even as some grumble that it is time-consuming to learn and that problems can be costly to fix.

The Winchester Country Club, which has a long history of hiring seasonal landscapers from Honduras to groom the golf course, signed up last summer to improve hiring practices. Club officials immediately noticed that some of their best workers did not reapply.

"We don't intentionally hire illegal workers," said club general manager Paul Lazar. "Obviously, the reality is there's some really good people out there in the workforce and we'd love to be able to hire them. They show up every day and try to do a good job, and they don't sit around and try to call their girlfriends on their cellphones."

Critics of the service are anxious about E-Verify's rapid expansion. They say the existing databases contain inaccurate and sometimes fraudulent information. And they caution that enrolling in the system is no guarantee against immigration raids: The Swift & Co. meat packing company was enrolled in E-Verify when federal agents raided several plants in 2006 and arrested more than 1,200 people.

In addition, they say, legitimate workers are unfairly rejected because companies are wrongly screening them before they are hired, without giving them a chance to solve the problem.

"We think that an expansion of E-Verify without immigration reform makes no sense whatsoever," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum in Washington. "We're not fixing the problem."

Government officials say they have boosted resources to significantly reduce errors. Last year, 3.9 percent of queries did not match, which is similar to the roughly 5 percent of the workforce that is estimated to be here illegally. Only 0.4 percent of those who were rejected had the finding overturned and were declared authorized to work.

"The system is working," said Kathy Lotspeich, deputy chief of verification for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security agency that operates E-Verify. "We rarely get criticism from people who actually use the program."

The use of E-Verify is still tiny relative to the general workforce. Less than 2 percent of the nation's companies are enrolled, but more states and companies are considering using the service.

"Let's face it, the vast majority of employers want to do the right thing," said lawyer Susan Cohen of the Boston law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo, which advises companies on the issue.

"With the increased emphasis over the last couple of years on workplace raids," she said, "the Department of Homeland Security has really put fear into the hearts of employers across the country about what could happen at their companies.

Farm Jobs Go To Residents, Not Guest Workers

by Ted Robbins

February 20, 2009 · The U.S. agricultural industry has long complained about a labor shortage in the fields. The work force is aging and it is frequently too difficult for new farm workers to get visas. So, the federal government has just begun implementing new rules to ease the H-2A temporary agriculture worker program.

At 5 a.m., nearly 10,000 Mexican lettuce pickers wait to enter the U.S. at the port of entry between San Luis, Sonora, in Mexico and San Luis, Ariz., near Yuma. It's a daily scene during the winter season, but Anadina Cardenez Alvarez is here for the first time.

She is part of a group getting their H-2A visas. It took three months and cost $400, but she says it was worth it.

"People have told me here you can make $50 to $70 a day," she says. "There, you can barely make $50 to $70 a week. That's a big difference."

On that day, though, there was no work. The grower needed only half the number of visa workers as he thought he would.

"Due to the economic situation in the country, the farmers in this area have planted up to 40 percent less," says Janine Duron, executive director of the Independent Agricultural Workers' Center, a nonprofit that connects workers with growers. "So there's been less of a demand for farm workers. And there was just about enough demand to be met with the local domestic farm workers."

In this case, local domestic farm workers means Mexican citizens with U.S. green cards, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. These workers could legally live in the U.S., but they choose to live in Mexico because it's cheaper. In the last few years, green-card holders have made up about 15 to 20 percent of crossers, according to one customs officer's estimate. This winter, he says, that number has shot up to about 60 percent.

Paul Muthart, general manager of Pasquinelli Farms in Yuma, says it's one more effect of the recession.

"These folks who would otherwise be on a roof or in a kitchen or making a bed are back in the ag field," Muthart says.

From Farming To Construction, And Back

Such is the case of Felix Valdez, who got his green card in 1985 when the federal government offered illegal workers amnesty. He worked in the fields, but then he found a better job in construction. That's the typical pattern for immigrants. But now he's back in the fields he once left.

"I changed because there's no more construction," Valdez says. "Maybe in March … Maybe."

University of California agricultural economist Phil Martin says what's happening now is not just immigrant labor moving back to the fields, but fewer immigrants leaving agriculture in the first place.

"During the Depression, a lot of Americans who had left the farm returned to the farm," Martin says. "I like to think of the farm labor market as a revolving door in a big department store. People enter, on average they stay less than 10 years, and they leave. I think that the major thing that's happened is that door is turning slower."

But that door may not be turning at all. By the time it's light out, the Yuma workers have been taken by bus to the fields. They start picking the seemingly endless rows of romaine, butter leaf and iceberg lettuce, stooping to pick the heads then using knives to chop off the root. It's obviously hard work, and Duron, the nonprofit director, says that's a problem. Most of the domestic workers here — the green-card holders — are at least 50 years old.

"And mostly with 30-40 years or more working in the fields," she says. "They're not able to produce as well as a younger work force, and there is no younger work force in the United States."

More H-2A visa workers will likely be needed when the recession ends. But for now, older so-called domestic farm workers and former construction workers will take the jobs — unless things get so bad that U.S. citizens are willing to move across the country for five months' work in these lettuce fields at $350 a week.

Restaurant Worker Sentenced for Employing Illegal Workers

Owner of San Pablo restaurant sentenced for employing illegal workers

By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 02/09/2009 05:33:16 PM PST

Updated: 02/10/2009 06:15:20 AM PST

SACRAMENTO — A restaurant owner convicted of employing illegal aliens and mail fraud was sentenced Friday to pay $49,000 in fines and spend 36 months on probation and eight months in home confinement.

Prosecutors said Rui Tao Lin, 53, was the owner of King's Buffet in Vacaville, one of a group of affiliated family-owned restaurants that included Empire Buffet in San Pablo. The restaurants used a Los Angeles employment agency to recruit undocumented Asian workers, prosecutors said, while also hiring other undocumented workers who responded to classified advertisements.

Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided two of the restaurants in September, but did not hit the San Pablo restaurant because it never opened the day of the scheduled raid. Agents also made arrests at several homes, including one in Hercules, where the owners allegedly housed an illegal workforce.

Rui Tao Lin's brother, Rui Yang Lin, and co-defendant Bi Xia Ni were each sentenced last month to 36 months probation and a $36,000 fine. All pleaded guilty to charges in the fall.

Milk will cost a lot more without foreign workers

Image via Wikipedia

Ag economist: Labor issues could affect food prices
Dairy Herd news source | Monday, January 05, 2009

Migrant or foreign labor is a must for the dairy industry and other parts of agriculture, and a reduction in the workforce could cost consumers considerably, says David Anderson, AgriLife Extension economist in College Station, Texas. Labor and immigration are tied together, and it includes both legal and illegal immigration, he adds.

While immigration can be from another state or another region of the U.S., many minds turn to illegal immigration coming from other countries.

“We’ve always restricted immigration through the number of visas, which are much fewer than the demand, and so that encourages illegal immigration,” he says. “But the whole issue is a lot more complex that just illegal immigration. It is one that is important to the overall economy of the U.S. and other countries. The past pace of economic growth is not possible without immigration. We could not have had the economic growth of the past if we had not had as much immigration.”

Agriculture has much at stake in this issue, he says. It needs to get the debate away from the big issues and establish that there is a legitimate need for these workers. “We have to get away from the macro debate on open borders, security, citizenship and no immigrants,” he notes.

Foreign labor represents an estimated 43 percent of the nation’s dairy workforce, Anderson says.

The value of milk production is $28.7 billion and this part of the dairy industry alone provides 147,000 jobs nationwide, he says. If the related industries are added in, it is a $55 billion industry with 363,000 jobs.

If you had a foreign labor reduction of only 20 percent, you would lose 33,000 employees, $5.5 billion in sales and $1.5 billion in income, Anderson explains. Total elimination would be a lot higher, he adds. Illegal immigrants make up 50 percent of agriculture’s workers.

“What if we lost that production, what happens to retail prices?” Anderson asks. “We could see as much as a 30 percent increase.”

With dairies, labor is the second largest expense next to feed, he said. Large dairies pay higher wagers because they need specialized labor and can afford it because they have a lower per unit costs and are better able to bid higher for labor, on average.

Anderson says turnover averages 15 percent across all dairies. The rate of turnover can impact production per cow, death loss and feed efficiency, meaning it is costly for dairy operators. “That’s the hidden effect,” he says. “There is a cost of finding and training another person.”

About 20 percent of the dairy owners said they see labor shortages and are increasing wages to attract workers, he said. Wages are higher where competing jobs are located.
There is a vacuum of available workers, in part caused by the failure to pass immigration reform and the movement of penalties from civil to criminal, Anderson said.

The oil and gas industry in the High Plains has been very competitive for laborers, pulling them away from where they were working, he said. People move for higher paying jobs. “We also have a changing economy right now that is going to affect things,” Anderson says. “When the economy is poor, fewer come and more go back because the opportunity is not here.”

Since the economy has faltered, there is evidence of migrants leaving, he says. The amount of money being sent back to Mexico is down.

“Labor is a commodity and the market has to equilibrate,” Anderson adds. “This may mean workers moving to opportunities and higher wages. The wages must become relatively equal.”

The people will go where the jobs are and where there is economic growth, he says.
More than 7,000 people work in the livestock industry in the High Plains, Anderson said, and an estimated 3,000 more will be needed by 2027 in the Panhandle.

There are about 1.2 million people in the High Plains, including parts of Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. That figure remains fairly stable. The average individual wage is $25,000 annually for different types of employment, but 70 percent of that in agriculture.

“It’s going to be hard to find workers,” Anderson concludes. “They must come from one of three sources: current young residents, steal them away from another job or recruit them in.”

Source: Texas A&M University

Bush Unveils New Rules for Guest Worker Hiring

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/us/12farm.html?_r=1

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

Published: December 11, 2008

LOS ANGELES — The Bush administration announced new rules on Thursday that it said would lessen the bureaucratic burden on employers seeking to hire foreign farm workers. Advocates for the workers, however, contended the changes would depress wages and working conditions.

The Labor Department released the changes in a document of more than 500 pages, the culmination of reviewing 11,000 comments since it proposed new regulations in February.

The changes apply to a guest worker program known as H-2A, after the visa that allows farmers to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis for field jobs they cannot fill with Americans.

Most farmers ignore the program because of red tape and delays that could cost them precious harvesting time. In California, the 5,000 H-2A workers are a fraction of the peak agriculture work force of 450,000, according to the California Farm Bureau.

But, after Congress failed to revamp immigration laws and come up with a new guest worker program in 2007, the administration, seeking to attract more farmers to the program, moved forward with revisions not requiring Congressional approval.

The changes, the first major ones in 20 years, include eliminating duplication among state and federal agencies in processing applications, putting in place a new wage formula the department said would be fairer to workers, and increasing fines for willfully displacing United States workers with foreign ones.

An assistant secretary of labor, Leon R. Sequeira, said in an interview that while the changes would make the program “more predictable and timely, the program is still far from simple and easy to comply with.”

Growers agreed, and suggested the new rules would fall prey to litigation and perhaps reversals by the new administration.

“This is a program everybody acknowledges needs an overhaul,” said Craig J. Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, a trade group. “Even if regulatory reform were wildly successful and carried on to the next administration, it can’t even begin to solve the agricultural labor crisis. The bottom line is Congress is still on the hook.”

Farmer and worker groups have backed long-stalled legislation that would make more sweeping changes.

Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, a major proponent of that legislation, denounced the revisions and said the senator “feels strongly that they should be withdrawn.”

Worker advocates said the Bush administration was seeking to put its stamp on the guest worker program instead of more rationally waiting for the next president. The regulations will be published next Thursday in The Federal Register and would take effect on Jan. 18, two days before President-elect Barack Obama is inaugurated.

Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farmworker Justice, an advocacy group based in Washington, said of the changes, “The intent is a massive expansion of the guest worker program by enticing employers into a program with low wages and poor working conditions.”

Cleaning Firm Used Illegal Workers at Chertoff Home

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003524_pf.html

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008; A01

Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees for a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation's top immigration official.

The company's owner says the workers sailed through the checks -- although some of them turned out to be illegal immigrants.

Now, owner James D. Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding. In October, he was fined $22,880 after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators said he failed to check identification and work documents and fill out required I-9 verification forms for employees, five of whom he said were part of crews sent to Chertoff's home and whom ICE told him to fire because they were undocumented.

"Our people need to know," said the Montgomery County businessman. "Our Homeland Security can't police their own home. How can they police our borders?"

Reid admits he made mistakes but called the fine so excessive that it may put him out of business. Several of his workers moved after ICE agents showed up at their homes, he said.

Raising a common objection among employers as ICE cracks down on illegal hirings across the country, Reid said it is unreasonable to expect businesspeople to distinguish between fake and real driver's licenses and Social Security cards.

Immigration laws are unevenly enforced, he added, allowing big companies to stay in business while crushing small-business owners and workers. He said the rules punish "scapegoats" such as him while inviting people at every level -- customers, subcontractors and contractors -- to look the other way while benefiting economically from cheaper labor.

"No one wants to put the blame on the head; they'd rather put the blame on the business owner," said Reid, who owns Consistent Cleaning Services. "Damned if I should be fined for employees that I took over to their house."

Chertoff declined to comment. "We're very constrained in what we can say about anybody who has any kind of issue with the department," he said.

The Secret Service uses workers' ID information to conduct security checks, not immigration checks, much like most police departments do when they pull over people for traffic stops.

Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the service, which is part of Chertoff's department, declined to discuss specific screening practices. But he said agents protecting the secretary "would have run the appropriate checks, screened and escorted people as appropriate in order to maintain the security of the residence and our protectee's security."

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said that in this type of investigation, ICE focuses on the employers, not where employees are dispatched. He said that contractors have the responsibility of ensuring that their workers are legal, and that the Chertoffs were assured by Reid that workers sent to their home were legal. Upon learning that Reid might have hired illegal immigrants, the Chertoffs fired him, and the secretary recused himself from the department's subsequent enforcement actions, Knocke said.

"This matter illustrates the need for comprehensive immigration reform and the importance of effective tools for companies to determine the lawful status of their workforce," he said.

The Bush administration has pushed to expand employers' use of E-Verify, for instance, an electronic system that can confirm new hires' work documents against federal databases.

In addition to the Chertoffs' house, Reid said, his service once cleaned the Washington home of former president Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), now secretary of state-designee, as well as homes of another Bush Cabinet member and Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. In those cases, he said, his company worked as a subcontractor and billing was done by a larger contractor firm.

ICE investigated Reid's company under a 1986 federal law barring employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. It provides for civil and criminal penalties against employers who do not examine workers' documents and keep completed I-9 forms.

In February, ICE agents singled out Reid's company, and they subpoenaed two years of payroll and I-9 records this summer, a U.S. official said. Reid was fined $2,750 for hiring violations and $20,130 for not completing paperwork.

His offenses included failing to ask for IDs from or fill out I-9 forms for several workers who turned out to be in the country illegally. Reid said he also did not verify the eligibility of people he knew were native-born U.S. citizens, including himself, his stepbrother, his sister and his sister's friend.

ICE policy states that companies are not randomly selected for scrutiny and that all investigations are based on tips or intelligence. ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Reid was targeted under a year-old initiative called Project Safe Harbor, in which field offices pursue employers in the service, agriculture and fast-food industries.

Nantel declined to say when the Chertoffs learned of the investigation. She likened the couple to restaurant or hotel customers who take the owner's word that its workers are legal.

Reid said he was referred to the Chertoffs in 2005 and worked mainly with the secretary's wife, Meryl J. Chertoff, an adjunct professor and director of the Sandra Day O'Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary at Georgetown Law School. Reid's calendar shows that the Chertoffs paid $185 per visit for his company to clean their suburban Maryland home.

Reid said he routinely asked workers to give personal information to Secret Service agents and assumed the workers were authorized because they were cleared.

Chertoff's situation appeared to be different from a case announced last week in which federal prosecutors arrested Lorraine Henderson, the Boston port director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another part of Chertoff's department, on charges that she repeatedly hired illegal immigrants to clean her condominium.

Staff researcher Julie Tate and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.