Firms Brace for Law on Immigrants : Efforts Under Way to Comply With New Documentation Rules

At the headquarters of Kelly Services in Troy, Mich., a new hot line has been installed to handle an expected flood of questions. New forms have been printed and new policies written. The staff has been briefed. New filing cabinets--650 of them, one in each branch office--await loads of additional paper work.

“We’re ready to roll right now,” said Irene Adams, senior vice president of the nation’s largest temporary help agency.

The preparations are part of Kelly’s strategy to comply with the new U.S. immigration law, which requires businesses to inspect and collect various identification documents from all new hires, including American citizens. With 525,000 people hired each year, Kelly must overcome an administrative hurdle to comply with the law.

“The start-up is going to be arduous,” said Adams, who spent four months conferring with company lawyers and other staff on new procedures and policies. “It’s going to take a good 18 months before things get back to normal.”

Landmark Law

Employers across the nation are bracing themselves for the landmark law, designed to halt the flow of illegal aliens into the United States and signed by President Reagan last November. The law provides for amnesty for some illegal aliens and imposes penalties on employers who violate its regulations. The formal regulations to implement the law were not issued in final form until Friday. Enforcement begins June 1.

However, even before that, when the government circulated proposed regulations, the business community discovered that the law, besides imposing penalties and extra paper work, touches a sensitive nerve in minority communities.

Sears, Roebuck, for instance, recently drew sharp criticism from Latino and church activists for its continued refusal to hire illegal aliens, even though the applicants stated that they were eligible for amnesty under the new law and intended to apply for it.

Sears has maintained its position even though the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in early April announced a change in the proposed regulations to allow employers to hire illegal aliens until Sept. 1 as long as they declare their intention to apply for amnesty. Previous versions of the rules, in effect, banned such hiring.

But Sears spokesman C. W. Rule said from the company’s Chicago headquarters: “If any INS guidelines have been changed, we have not received any notification.”

To immigrant rights groups, the Sears case points up how little some employers know about the new law. As a result, such groups say, they have received complaints about employers firing illegal aliens and denying jobs to foreign-looking job applicants suspected of being in the United States without proper immigration documents.

“Those most adversely affected will be those of Hispanic or Asian origin,” warned Linda Wong, associate counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The INS will begin enforcing the regulations June 1 and, before then, will distribute about 8 million pamphlets about the law to employers. The agency says one month is enough time for business to learn the rules. Others are not so sure.

“There are a lot of people who don’t know anything about the law,” said Los Angeles attorney Martin L. Sturman, who is advising business clients about the new legislation. “Business people will be paranoid for some time. They may break the law by being super-cautious and be inadvertently discriminating.”

But many employers expect no major problems arising from the law. “This is not really a big, major deal,” said Gary Weaver, director of employee relations at Disneyland. Although the Magic Kingdom will have to lease an extra photocopier to copy documents submitted by the 4,000 employees hired each year, Weaver said the cost of complying with the law is insignificant.

Difficult to Plan

Still, with the final version of the regulations issued only on Friday, many employers found it difficult to plan and were concerned about the conflicting advice they received. “I attended a seminar where the government officials were arguing among themselves about what the act said,” recalled George Berger, vice president of human resources at the Fort Worth headquarters of Tandy Corp., parent firm of the Radio Shack electronics and computer store chain.

“Employers . . . want to make sure they comply with the law,” said Cathie Shattuck, a labor and employment lawyer in Washington, who has been receiving at least six calls day from employers seeking information. “Usually they don’t call till they are in trouble.”

Shortly after the law was passed last year, more than 1,000 companies attended a Merchants and Manufacturers Assn. immigration seminar. The large turnout “indicated there was much concern in the business community” about what the regulations implementing the law were going to be, association spokesman Lou Custrini said.

The California Restaurant Assn. commissioned a 44-minute video tape to instruct its members about the major provisions in the law. Tapes in Spanish and English were also made to show to restaurant employees. Copies of the three tapes will cost members a total of $120.

Intentions Stated

The INS, charged with enforcing the law, takes the high degree of employer interest as a good sign. “We know there is going to be a very high level of compliance with the law,” Dave Nachtsheim, an official in the INS’s enforcement arm said, because “people wouldn’t be interested in the rules if they planned to break them.”

And there are plenty of new rules under the law:

- With the exception of aliens who believe they qualify for amnesty and who state their intention to apply for it, employers have been prohibited from knowingly hiring undocumented workers since Nov. 6, 1986--when the act was signed into law. Penalties range from a $250 fine on the first offense to up to six months in jail for repeat offenders. Enforcement begins June 1, but, for the first year, only warnings will be issued to first-time offenders. Employers face no penalties for having hired undocumented workers before Nov. 6.

- All new employees must submit documents--such as a passport, Social Security card and driver’s license--to prove their identity and right to work. Employers must check the documents to determine whether they are valid and may make copies if they wish. Also, the employer and employee must fill out and sign an INS form that attests to the validity of the documents submitted by the employee. The form must be kept on file for at least three years and presented to INS agents on demand.

- An employer can be fined up to $1,000 for failing to keep the proper documents for the required period and up to $2,000 if found guilty of discriminating on the basis of national origin or citizenship.

“Any government regulation that requires as extensive compliance as this one does is a headache,” said Lyle Fackrell, vice president of personnel for the International House of Pancakes restaurant chain.

There will be additional problems for companies with numerous and far-flung offices. “Our biggest challenge has been explaining the law completely and simply to our field management,” said Tandy’s Berger, who has to get the message across to the managers of more than 7,000 company-owned and franchised Radio Shack stores. Berger is backing up step-by-step written instructions with training sessions for some 400 district managers.

Employers must also collect documentation from employees hired since last Nov. 6, if they are still on the job June 1. People who have gone to work for UCLA--one of the county’s largest employers--since last November have received memos that tell them, in essence, to “start looking for your stuff,” said Bonnie Husebye, manager of the university’s employment staff.

But searching for the right documents--even for U.S. citizens--has posed problems. “Some new hires are scurrying to get copies of their Social Security cards they’ve lost,” Berger said. “There’s going to be an onslaught of people ordering copies of their birth certificates, too.”

Never Come Back

Carol Cole, director of personnel at the Sheraton Grande hotel in downtown Los Angeles, said some applicants “say they can bring the papers tomorrow, and they just never come back.”

Employers are worried about whether they will be able to spot fraudulent documents, as the law requires. “If you have a handwritten green card (legal-resident document) and the picture is falling off, you know something is up,” said David B. Borovay, controller of Leadtec California, a San Fernando clothing contractor. But in most cases, he added, “there’s just no way you can tell if it is valid.”

Some confusion has also arisen as to what a valid document looks like. The alien registration cards commonly known as green cards, are not really green--they are blue. As a result, Wong said, “We have legal residents of Hispanic descent who were denied employment because their alien registration cards were not green.”

Small businesses, with fewer employees than major corporations, may have an easier time coping with paper work required by the new law. But many employers and personnel directors fear that small businesses might be more prone to discriminate than larger firms with in-house lawyers or equal-employment officers to guard against discriminatory practices.

Robert Walter, vice president and production manager of Frank Walter Sportswear Contractors, which hires only 25 to 35 new people each year, disagrees with that theory. The probability that an employer will discriminate is based more on “the ethics of the person doing the hiring rather than on the size of the employer,” he said.

Despite the problems, employers agree that it will be business as usual once everybody becomes accustomed to the new rules.

“It’s certainly means more paper work,” said Shirley Perkins, vice president of employee relations at First Interstate Bancorp, which hires about 7,000 people a year. “But it’s not going to sink the ship,” she said.

Asking for Documents

In fact, First Interstate and other businesses--such as Southern California Edison, Transamerica Life and Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurants--have already begun asking employees for the necessary documents and have not run into any major hitches, company officials said.

The law is not expected to cause much trauma among Southern California’s largest private employers--aerospace and defense contractors. Such companies, as federal contractors, have been requiring new employees to prove their citizenship for years, said Barbara Vlashart, employment manager for Lockheed California, which employs about 16,500 people in Los Angeles County.

The law, she said, “is not going to be a major problem for us.”