Food Franchisee Fined for Hiring Illegal Aliens
The Immigration and Naturalization Service, announcing its first criminal prosecution under the revised immigration law, said Wednesday that a Maryland food company has pleaded guilty in federal district court to employing illegal aliens at two of its Wendy’s franchises in Virginia.
The company, Davco Inc., based in Crofton, Md., will pay a fine of $60,000 for “blatantly hiring” at least 17 undocumented immigrants, William J. Carroll, director of the INS Washington district office, told a news conference.
The illegal aliens, mostly Salvadorans, were arrested this spring in two raids on the restaurants. They may face deportation.
The action sends a warning to companies practicing “a modern-day system of slavery,” Carroll said in distinguishing the Davco case from others pursued under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Although many firms have paid fines for civil violations, such as keeping incomplete or fraudulent personnel records, Davco is the first company to face criminal charges under the law.
INS Getting Tough
The case represents an increasingly tough INS effort to crack down on employers who violate regulations against hiring illegal workers. Carroll estimated that most employers nationwide are complying with the law, but emphasized that Davco’s is a “precedent case” for those that may still be guilty of violations.
“The message is this: If you are hiring unauthorized, illegal aliens because you think, as a corporate manager, that you’re going to save money by giving a poor wage to people or circumventing the law, (then) it’s going to be costly to you,” he said.
Ron Kirstien, Davco’s president, said he was “shocked and concerned” to learn that illegal aliens had been arrested working at the company’s Wendy’s restaurants. He said, however, that they were paid at the same rate as other employees, which was above the minimum wage.
Davco, which owns 106 Wendy’s restaurants in Washington, Baltimore and northern Virginia, is now in full compliance with the law, Kirstien said in an interview.
Payrolls Examined
“The INS and Davco joined in a cooperative spirit to go through and validate our employees here,” he said. As part of their investigation, INS officers examined Davco payroll records dating from 1986 to the present, a period in which Kirstien estimated about 20,000 people were hired.
“When you have that volume of employees, sometimes a person can slip through,” Kirstien said. “Now we have a checks-and-balances system that will keep that from ever happening again.” A full-time employee will verify and keep track of paper work concerning new hires, he added.
The immigration legislation allowed a grace period so that employers could inform themselves about the new law after it was enacted two years ago. That grace period expired June 1, 1988.
Davco is to bring its hiring practices into compliance with the law within 12 months, as part of an authorized-worker program directed by the INS, which will recommend people for jobs in Davco’s restaurants.
