April 30, 2009
By Anna Gorman and James Oliphant
The Los Angeles Times
The Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings today on the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform as the Department of Homeland Security issued new work-site enforcement protocols, refocusing attention on employers rather than illegal workers.
The new federal guidelines instruct immigration agents to look for evidence of money laundering, mistreatment of workers, trafficking, smuggling and identification document fraud. They also direct agents to get indictments, criminal arrest or search warrants before arresting employees.
“Arresting and removing illegal workers must be part of a strategy to deter unlawful employment, but is, alone, insufficient as a comprehensive worksite enforcement strategy,” the document states.
The guidelines are a break from the enforcement strategy under the Bush administration, when large work-site raids led to the arrest and deportation of thousands of illegal workers but few criminal prosecutions of their bosses. In 2008, only 135 of more than 6,000 work-site arrests were of employers.
The guidelines lay out the new strategy of penalizing employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers and deterring those tempted to hire them. The goal, according to the department, is to slow down illegal crossings by targeting the magnet and to reduce unfair competition.
“The prospect for employment in the United States continues to be one of the leading causes of illegal immigration,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler. “This is a clear message to the millions of businesses who play by the rules but find themselves competing against others who enter the illegal labor market that help is on the way.”
The department also made clear that immigration agents would continue detaining illegal workers encountered during any enforcement.
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, said he basically agreed with the new protocols and wasn’t concerned that the new focus would lead to a decrease in raids. “The point of the raids is not how many people get arrested, how many employers go to jail, how many illegals get deported,” he said. “The point is how many employers that you scare into not hiring illegals and how many illegals you scare into going back home.”
Michele Waslin, senior policy analyst for the American Immigration Law Foundation, said she welcomed the change on work-site enforcement and the new focus on abusive employers. But she said Homeland Security officials should also work with the Labor Department. “It’s not just the immigration laws that are being violated,” she said.
Waslin said that the new protocols are just a first step and that she was optimistic about the Senate hearing. “There is only so far that these guidelines can take us, given the fact that we have a broken immigration system,” she said.
The hearing, which is underway, is scheduled to include testimony from Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union; and Kris Kobach, University of Missouri law professor.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/new-federal-worksite-enforcement-policies-issued.html
