A recent Tribune editorial (“A question of equity on immigration,” July 27) is based upon what I consider to be an erroneous article by The Chicago Reporter on Immigration and Naturalization Service employer sanctions and worksite enforcement operations.
The article and your editorial have two basic conclusions: Worksite enforcement does little to curb illegal employment and penalize employers; INS enforcement practices in Illinois may discriminate because the percentage of Mexican nationals arrested by INS is far greater than the overall percentage of illegal Mexican nationals in the state. Both of these conclusions clearly demonstrate the half-truth is far more dangerous than the outright lie.
The article and your subsequent editorial assume that enforcement is the key to the employer-sanctions law. Any person who has researched the issue properly would know that verification, not enforcement, is the key to the law and to preventing illegal employment. That was Congress’ rationale for the 1986 act, and the failure of the verification system is the true reason why employer sanctions have done little to curb illegal employment.
The article glosses over the single most important issue of the verification system and employer sanctions: the proliferation and use of counterfeit documents. Counterfeit documents are the reason less than half the employers who hire illegal workers are fined by INS. In most cases, employers are duped by illegal workers who present counterfeit documents to obtain employment. In other instances, employers engage in “a wink and a nod” compliance. They do the verification knowing they are accepting counterfeit documents, then plead good faith and ignorance when their illegal workers are arrested by INS.
INS cannot charge someone with wrongdoing based upon assumptions, allegations, implications or innuendo. We need facts and evidence, and counterfeit documents give unscrupulous employers a built-in alibi.
The presence of illegal workers at a business does not automatically mean the employer has violated the law, and INS must use its limited enforcement resources to try to distinguish between “good” and “bad” employers. With 25 worksite enforcement agents in the Chicago District office and 400,000 incorporated (and unknown thousands of unincorporated) businesses in Illinois, it should be obvious that verification, not enforcement, is the key.
The implication that INS engages in selective, discriminatory enforcement that targets one nationality is ludicrous. INS targets those industries that traditionally have been the most serious violators. In some areas that may be garment-industry sweatshops hiring illegal Asians or restaurants hiring Central Americans. In Illinois it is the beef packing and food service industry, the light manufacturing industry and the construction and agriculture industries, all of which hire Mexicans who have been smuggled into the interior of the United States and are often subjected to human-rights violations by both smugglers and employers.
To even imply that INS targets a particular nationality for enforcement is an insult to the agency with the largest minority representation of any agency in the federal government, an agency in which almost 25 percent of its employees are of Hispanic origin.
