An Important Piece of Paper : Need for new documentation demonstrated by Disney immigrant flap

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is recommending a fine of nearly $400,000 against Disneyland for allegedly violating laws on hiring immigrants. That would be the largest INS penalty in California history. It demonstrates both the continuing problem with violations of immigration laws and brings to mind one possible solution.

Disneyland, with its 80-acre theme park and 1,131-room hotel, is a major employer in Southern California. The peak summer work force numbers about 12,000 full-time and part-time workers. The INS examination of more than 6,000 Disneyland employees turned up 1,156 violations.

Disney says most resulted from its inability to meet INS requests for thousands of documents within 72 hours as required by law. The INS, however, says that a number of cases involved poor documentation, such as mismatched Social Security numbers in Disney and INS files, or missing documents.

All of this points up the difficulty that employers in general say they have in complying with immigration laws. And they are right, to a point.

But as one prominent immigration attorney, Kathryn Elizabeth Terry, suggests, employers can avoid much of this difficulty through common sense. For example, match the birth date and photo on a green card. If the birth date makes the applicant 10 years old but the picture is of a 40-year-old, there’s a problem.

The law lets employers off the hook if the document is a skilled forgery. And no one disputes that phony cards are readily available, at prices as low as $25 each. February raids in Santa Ana confiscated a staggering 88,000 fake Social Security cards, temporary resident documents and immigration green cards.

One step that should be taken is developing a reasonably tamper- or counterfeit-proof Social Security card and requiring all workers to have it. An employer who hired someone without the card would be subject rightfully to a stiff fine. Although there are civil liberties criticisms of a national identity document, Social Security cards are not discriminatory, because in many cases even toddlers now are required to have them.

In the end, companies like Disney have a responsibility to make sure they aren’t carelessly hiring illegal workers.

If the INS could make its case against Disney, the fine, with an average of $341 per violation, would be reasonable, because fines for infractions of the rules usually range from $100 to $1,000. But it’s important to remember that while employers must comply with the law in their hiring practices, it’s not their job to be the nation’s front line of defense in weeding out illegal immigrants. That’s the job of the INS, which could get a big assist from a more secure Social Security card, since that number is already a prerequisite for work.