U.S. Government attacks illegal work with audits, instead of raids
A woman cries after a raid in Portsville, Iowa in 2008.
The Obama administration has replaced immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers, reported The New York Times
While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported.
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to the paper.
Employers say the audits reach more companies than the work-site roundups of the administration of President George W. Bush. The audits force businesses to fire every suspected illegal immigrant on the payroll, not just those who happened to be on duty at the time of a raid and make it much harder to hire other unauthorized workers as replacements, adds the report.
Immigration inspectors who pored over the records of one of those growers, Gebbers Farms, found evidence that more than 500 of its workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico, were in the country illegally. In December, Gebbers Farms, based in this Washington orchard town, fired the workers.
Still, the new strategy does not meet the expectancies of Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, who in an interview with the newspaper complained that most immigrants are not deported, unlike Bush raids.
“Even if discovered, illegal aliens are allowed to walk free and seek employment elsewhere” he complained.
“This lax policy is particularly troubling at a time when so many Americans have difficulty finding a job,” he added.
In exchange, the companies claim that Obama’s policy reduces labor force low-skilled employees to fill jobs that Americans will not do, despite the crisis, such as farming.
After the layoffs, Gebbers Farms placed advertisements to recruit new employees, but in the absence of applicants, requested the federal government for a temporary worker program to legally bring 1,200 foreign workers, mainly from Mexico.
Luis Velarde (LAV)
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