INS to Expand Job-Applicant Verification Program : Immigration: Pilot plan lets firms check the validity of potential hires’ employment documents by telephone.

A pilot program that allows employers to verify by telephone whether job applicants have valid employment documents will be expanded, immigration officials announced Friday.

The Los Angeles program is part of a government effort to slow illegal immigration by cutting off access to jobs, but civil rights groups fear it may be misused.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service also will add 38 people in California to enforce sanctions against employers who hire undocumented immigrants and to speed deportation of imprisoned illegal immigrants.

The pilot program--which will be expanded to 200 employers in Los Angeles by year’s end from the nine who participated last year--allows employers to call the INS and determine immediately if a job applicant’s documents are valid.

Civil rights groups are concerned that the verification system will be inaccurate, preventing people legally entitled to work from getting jobs. They cite the agency’s traditionally large backlogs and sometimes erroneous records.

“Overall, we don’t have a problem with INS regulation of employment,” said Christa Schacht, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “We just want it done in a very fair and equitable manner, and not discriminatorily.”

An INS spokesman said the agency has procedures in place to prevent people from losing jobs because of inaccurate computer checks.

The INS manually verifies the documents when a computer check turns up no record of the applicant’s documents, said Don Mueller, an INS representative. Federal policy forbids the employer to postpone hiring of the person while awaiting that verification.

“Some poor guy is not going to come in and, because the computer messed up, lose a job,” Mueller said.

The verification program was popular with employers in its first trial. The INS aims to include 500 Los Angeles employers by 1996.

The agency has sporadically enforced employer sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants. Agency officials hope for better success from combining the telephone verification system with enforcement actions directed at industries that historically have hired the most illegal immigrants.

By year’s end, the Border Patrol will add 200 agents in San Diego, 300 in Texas and 100 in Arizona. Stricter enforcement along the border near San Diego and El Paso has pushed more illegal immigration to Arizona and elsewhere in Texas.

The 1995 INS budget was increased 25% from last year’s, the largest rise in the agency’s history.

Devaluation of the Mexican peso has led to worries that more Mexicans may come north looking for work. But INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said Friday that the agency has not yet seen an increase in illegal border crossings caused by the peso’s drop.

She also said increases in INS border enforcement were part of a long-term strategy by the Clinton Administration, not a response to anti-immigrant sentiment.