INS Plans to Impose Fines Without Warning : Illegal Alien Employers to Face Stiffer Enforcement

The Immigration and Naturalization Service outlined plans Thursday to step up enforcement of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, including a program that will allow INS investigators to impose stiff fines on employers of illegal aliens without first issuing a warning.

“Things are going to get tighter” for employers who continue to hire illegal workers, INS Commissioner Alan C. Nelson warned as the sweeping immigration law approaches its second phase.

“Our general policy is going to be that if an employer has been visited and we find another violation after June 1, we will fine,” he said. In cases where the abuse is flagrant, a first violation may bring a fine, he said.

As part of its crackdown, the INS will boost its force of investigators from 850 to 1,700 by the end of the year, Nelson said. In addition, the agency will begin making random checks of employers nationwide, with intensive inspections directed at industries in which the hiring of illegal aliens has been commonplace in the past.

“The idea is that no employer should think that just because he lives in an area or is in an industry that has not had a lot of illegal workers in the past, he won’t be visited,” said INS spokesman Greg Leo. “The message to employers is, this law applies to you and you will be checked.”

After Congress passed the landmark immigration reform law two years ago, the government gave employers a grace period to inform themselves about the new sanctions against hiring illegal workers. During that period, the INS was required to give violating employers a warning citation before issuing a fine.

At the same time, the agency concentrated on a parallel program that allowed more than a million illegal immigrants to seek legal residency so that they could work legally.

The alien application period expired earlier this month. The grace period for most employers ends June 1. The only exception is for agricultural employers, including fruit and vegetable growers, who will be under the more lenient rules until Dec. 1.

In the past year, Nelson said, INS officials have visited 900,000 U.S. employers to inform them of their obligations under the new law. About 2,200 have received warning citations and 100 have been fined, the latter for repeat violations.

The law authorizes fines ranging from $250 to $2,000 for each illegal worker on an employer’s payroll. For repeat violations, the INS may levy employer fines of up to $10,000 for each illegal worker.

So far, the agency has collected $45,000 in fines with another $356,000 assessed but not yet paid, INS officials said.

Nelson said the number of fines probably will triple in the coming year as enforcement stiffens.

“Our goal is voluntary compliance,” said Leo, the INS’s director of congressional and public affairs.

Nelson called the crackdown a “natural progression” from the past year’s efforts in education and legalization.

“We think the first year went very well, with very few claims of discrimination filed and relatively little complaint by the employer community,” Nelson said. Many employers still fear that conscientious businesses will be bogged down with the paper-work requirements on documenting workers’ status while violating employers will disregard them and go unpunished, Nelson added.

“The one thing they come back to us with is, you had better enforce it,” Nelson said.

The immigration watchdogs also plan to launch a campaign to teach U.S. employers how to find legal workers to work for them, Nelson said.