Practice Tolerated by Some Employers : Aliens Using Phony Papers to Get Work, Study Finds

Two undocumented laborers from Mexico were spied on a San Diego street Monday morning, looking for work.

“We haven’t found any jobs,” one of them explained. “All the bosses are asking for papers.”

The comment reflected a new twist for illegal aliens seeking work these days: Since passage of the landmark immigration law, many, if not most, employers are asking for proof of legal status in the United States, as required by the new law.

But researchers at the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies have found that many workers without legal papers still are finding work by using false documents--a practice the researchers say some Southern California employers tolerate, if not encourage.

No Open Defiance

“We haven’t found many employers who are openly defying the law,” said Anna Garcia, a research associate at the center who is working on the immigration study, which is perhaps the most in-depth such endeavor nationwide. “But while employers may be abiding by the letter of the law, they’re not necessarily following the spirit of the law.”

Those employers who appear to be ignoring the law, researchers say, include construction contractors, landscapers and others who routinely hire undocumented day laborers from street corners and other well-known gathering places in San Diego County and the rest of Southern California.

Such employers are apparently attempting to take advantage of a provision of the law that exempts them from the paperwork requirements if they hire workers for three days or less. Many have been hiring workers for a few days, laying them off and then rehiring them or hiring replacement undocumented workers, researchers have found.

But, said Duke Austin, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, “If you’re doing that with the intent of circumventing the law, there could be some possible jeopardy on the part of the employer.”

Fines, Jail as Penalty

If authorities prove that employers are deliberating trying to get around the law’s documentation requirements, Austin explained, they could be subject to fines up to $10,000 per worker and jail terms of up to a year--sanctions imposed for other violations of the law as well.

Since May, center researchers have interviewed about 60 Southern California employers, all in non-agricultural fields such as the manufacturing and apparel-production sectors, and in service-related jobs in restaurants and hotels. Farm employers weren’t included in the study, as agricultural concerns are essentially exempt from legal sanctions under the new law until Dec. 1.

The employers surveyed--all from San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties--were guaranteed anonymity in return for answering detailed questions examining their operations and their compliance with the new law. Researchers expect to interview another 40 employers before pulling together all their data and publishing the results this year, said Garcia, who agreed to talk about some preliminary findings. As part of the study, the academic investigators are also interviewing undocumented workers.

Central Part of Law

The legal sanctions--including potential jail terms and fines for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens--are a central part of the immigration statute, which President Reagan signed into law on Nov. 6, 1986. The law requires that all employers fill out and maintain forms specifying what documentation has been presented by new workers to prove their legal status in the United States. Officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service have argued that the great majority of employers will abide by the requirements voluntarily--a belief that the study appears to bear out.

The sanctions were needed, immigration authorities and others have long argued, to ensure that the job market would dry up for undocumented immigrants.

Although it is early to judge definitively, the ongoing study at UC San Diego indicates that it hasn’t quite worked that way, apparently because many workers have resorted to false papers.

Prospective employees present the fraudulent documents--such as forged Social Security cards and various immigration documents--as “proof” to employers, who can then demonstrate to INS inspectors that they have made a “good faith” effort to comply with the new law.

“They (employers) know that it’s hard for the INS to accuse them of knowing that a document was fraudulent, unless it’s blatant” Garcia said. “They’re very aware of the ‘good faith’ defense.”

Aware of Fraud

U.S. officials have said they are aware of the flourishing market in fraudulent immigration documents, but they maintain that the availability of such paperwork will not undercut the new law.

“We do think there’s some false document increase out there, but we don’t think it’s pervasive at this time,” said Austin, the INS spokesman.

Many employers, said Garcia, appear to be willing to overlook phony documents.

She recalled the case of a major Los Angeles garment maker who recounted how a prospective worker showed him a blatantly false Social Security card.

“He told the guy to go get a better document and he’d hire him the next day,” Garcia said.

Such actions, says the INS, could get employers in trouble.

“If they’re encouraging employees to use false documents, they could be subject to penalties,” said Austin. “That’s a very risky business.”