Civil Rights Report Alleges Aliens Denied Jobs by Law

In an effort to force changes in landmark immigration legislation, a coalition of civil rights advocates Thursday charged that provisions of the law have led to employers denying jobs to people who look or sound foreign--even though they are entitled to work in this country.

A provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act-- which punishes businesses and individuals who knowingly hire illegal immigrants--has caused employers to improperly deny jobs to workers--immigrants and citizens--who look or sound foreign, the coalition charged.

“This backs up what we feared all along, that employer sanctions have caused a great deal of harm,” said Anne Kamsvaag, an attorney for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which issued an 18-page report that documents 1,085 cases of alleged workplace discrimination.

The coalition is fighting to end the sanctions and plans to use the report to lobby Congress.

Fearing they will be fined or jailed for hiring illegal immigrants, employers frequently refuse to hire an applicant they think is foreign, the report said. Or, employers require the applicant to supply more proof than is legally necessary to show he or she is entitled to work in this country.

The employer might also refuse to recognize documents that, in fact, are legitimate.

While the charges are not new, the timing of the report--the latest in a string of surveys that describe alleged ethnic discrimination--was significant. Next Thursday, the General Accounting Office is scheduled to release its third and final progress report on the provision of the immigration law that establishes employer sanctions.

If the GAO report finds “widespread” instances of discrimination as a result of the law, Congress must act to review the legislation. In its 1988 report to Congress, the federal agency concluded that although 16% of employers have discriminated against workers who look or sound foreign, this did not constitute widespread discrimination.

With the final report now due, advocacy groups across the country, among them the Los Angeles coalition, are stepping up their campaign to have the sanctions overturned.

“We are here to tell Congress, ‘I told you so,’ ” Linda Wong, president of California Tomorrow, an immigrant advocacy group, said in labeling the sanctions provision a failure that has not fulfilled the government’s stated goal of stemming the tide of illegal immigration.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said the agency is confident the sanctions are working.

Increasingly, employers too are speaking out against the sanctions, saying the complicated law is too costly and confusing.

Josie Gonzalez, a private lawyer who has represented several businesses that have been fined by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said employers often would rather risk a discrimination complaint than the “wrath” of immigration agents.

“They (employers) find this law quite burdensome to comply with,” Gonzalez said. “They tend to err on the side of not hiring if there are any doubts.”

She said she knows of six cases of people who applied for political refugee status and were entitled to work, but they were denied jobs because the INS form they were given was mistakenly printed with the word “Sample.”

Rene Martinez, who came to Los Angeles from El Salvador in 1983, is not eligible for amnesty but has applied for political asylum. He carries a letter from the INS that says he is entitled to work, but no potential employer respects it, he said. “I was better off before, without any permit,” he said.

The report released Thursday was actually the compilation of several studies conducted over a three-year period.

Among the studies was one conducted in Los Angeles which described discrimination against Latinos who speak English with an accent. By comparing employers’ reactions to paired individuals posing as job applicants--one who spoke English with an accent and one without--the study found that in nearly one-third of the cases, the accented speaker was treated less favorably. In one out of five cases the accented speakers were not even considered for the job.