SEATTLE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached its highest number yet of companies audited for suspicion of having illegal aliens on their payrolls this past fiscal year.
Audits of employer I-9 forms increased from 250 in fiscal year 2007 to more than 3,000 in 2012. From fiscal years 2009 to 2012, the total amount of fines grew to nearly $13 million from $1 million. The number of company managers arrested has increased to 238, according to data provided by the immigration agency.
The investigations of companies have been one of the pillars of President Barack Obama’s immigration policy.
When Obama recently spoke about addressing immigration changes in his second term, he said any measure should contain penalties for companies that purposely hire illegal aliens. It’s not a new stand, but one he will likely highlight as his administration launches efforts to revamp the nation’s immigration system.
“Our goal is compliance and deterrence,” said Brad Bench, special agent in charge at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Seattle office. “The majority of the companies we do audits on end up with no fines at all, but again, it’s part of the deterrence method. If companies know we’re out there, looking across the board, they’re more likely to bring themselves into compliance.”
While the administration has used those numbers to bolster its record on immigration enforcement, advocates say the audits have pushed workers further underground by causing mass layoffs and disrupting business practices.
When the immigration agency’s audit letter arrived at Belco Forest Products, management wasn’t entirely surprised. Two nearby businesses in Shelton, a small timber town on a bay off Washington state’s Puget Sound, had already been investigated.
But the 2010 inquiry became a months-long process that cost the timber company experienced workers and money. It was fined $17,700 for technicalities on its record keeping.
“What I don’t like is the roll of the dice,” said Belco’s chief financial officer, Tom Behrens. “Why do some companies get audited and some don’t? Either everyone gets audited or nobody does. Level the playing field.”
Belco was one of 339 companies fined in fiscal year 2011and one of thousands audited that year.
Employers are required to have their workers fill out an I-9 form that declares them authorized to work in the country. Currently, an employer needs only to verify that identifying documents look real.
The audits, part of a $138 million worksite enforcement effort, rely on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers scouring over payroll records to find names that don’t match Social Security numbers and other identification databases.
The audits “don’t make any sense before a legalization program,” said Daniel Costa, an immigration-policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “You’re leaving the whole thing up to an employer’s eyesight and subjective judgment, that’s the failure of the law. There’s no verification at all. Then you have the government making a subjective judgment aboutsubjective judgment.”
An AP review of audits that resulted in fines in fiscal year 2011 shows that the federal government is fining industries across the country that are reliant on manual labor and that historically have hired immigrants. The data provide a glimpse into the results of a process affecting thousands ofcompanies and thousands of workers nationwide.
Over the years, the immigration agency has switched back-and-forth between making names of the companies fined public or not. Lately, it has emphasized its criminal investigations of managers, such as a Dunkin’ Donuts manager in Maine sentenced to home arrest for knowingly hiring illegal aliens or a manager of an Illinois hiring firm who got 18 months in prison.
In fiscal year 2011, the most recent year reviewed by the AP, the median fine was $11,000. The state with the most workplaces fined was Texas with 63, followed by New Jersey with 37.
The lowest fine was $90 to a Massachusetts fishing company. The highest fine was $394,944 to an employment agency in Minneapolis, according to the data released to the AP through a public-records request.
A Subway spokesman said the company advises franchise owners to follow the law. A Heinz spokesman declined comment.
Bench didn’t have specifics on what percentage of fines come from companies having illegal aliens on their payroll, as opposed to technical paperwork fines.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 12/24/2012