INS Brings War on Illegal Hiring to a New Front

The traditional tactics of fines and audits have done little to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants, so a new federal pilot program begun in Orange County is taking a different approach: Education.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has doubled the number of agents working in the county and this month began a massive training program to acquaint hundreds of the city’s business owners with immigration policy and penalties.

“We will still fine people, that’s not changing,” said Robert H. Reed, the special agent leading the pilot program. “But we’ve seen the fines still haven’t brought about a broad-based compliance with the law, and that’s the bottom line. It’s time to try some new things.”

The seminars began in Laguna Niguel last week when five employers--including owners of a bolt manufacturer, a small print shop and a beauty salon--filed into a room at an Orange County federal building to learn, for instance, how to spot fake Social Security cards. They also heard firsthand about the steep fines facing employers who hire illegal immigrants.

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Those five are among 200 employers in Santa Ana and the city of Industry selected randomly from a federal database. They include mortgage companies, dentists, metal working shops and merchants. All will be audited. “Our intent here is not to find fault, it’s to get compliance,” Reed said. “We want to make sure they understand the situation.”

Martha Guzman, owner of Martha’s beauty salon, was in the first class. Guzman said some other employers seemed to be apprehensive about the seminar, but she found the information exchange refreshing.

“It was good because I like to know what my obligations are,” said Guzman, who has four employees. “And now I know.”

One downtown Santa Ana shopkeeper said this week that he would not be answering his notice, which he had tucked beneath the drawer in his cash register.

“If they want to talk to me, they can come here,” said the store owner, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used. “If they want to find indocumentados, they should just walk up and down the streets.”

The two-hour classes includes a discussion of how to fill out the often complicated employee verification forms required by law. Employers also learn how to inspect documents and identification cards and recognize fakes.

While the 200 seminar notices have been mailed out, the response has been slow to sign up for the classes. The seminars, unlike audits, are voluntary, and the mostly empty class schedules hanging in the new INS office in Santa Ana show that many employers have been reluctant to participate.

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Reed attributes the slow response to the program’s newness and the trepidation some business owners might have about his agency. Companies can be fined up to $2,000 per employee for knowingly hiring unauthorized immigrants and an additional $1,000 per worker for failure to correctly complete out employee eligibility paperwork.

“I think some employers will view this--and us--with suspicion,” he said. “But we hope to overcome that.”

The agency is also inviting employers of all types to register for the seminars on their own. Reed said he hopes business owners will view the class as a way to learn the law, and he promised that participants who seek out the class would not be routinely audited. Interested employers should call (714) 479-0235.

While Reed said the education outreach “marks a change in philosophy,” it does not signal the end of traditional INS tactics. Just the opposite, the agency has dramatically stepped up the number of audits and investigations for Orange County workplaces, with projections of more than 450 cases this year compared to about 40 handled last year.

As part of the new program, the INS also has forged a partnership with local police to disrupt the document counterfeiting rings dotting Santa Ana, Reed said.

Santa Ana “is a hub for fraudulent documents for Orange County and all of Southern California,” Reed said. “The document pipeline tentacles out to virtually every major city in the United States.”

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters said the bogus birth certificates and driver’s licenses can be used by both illegal immigrants and criminals to evade the law and exploit the system. Walters said the federal assistance is both welcome and needed.

“It’s a big problem here because there is such a huge market for these documents,” Walters said. “The borders have been out of control for so long, there are a lot of buyers.”

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Jobs are the “magnet” pulling immigrants to the United States, Reed said, and perhaps disrupting the flow of bogus documents and encouraging employers to better screen their workers will dissuade some of the flow.

Hefty employer penalties also send a message, Reed said. Last month, the INS slapped Clothes Connection, a Santa Ana garment contractor, with a $440,000 fine, one of the largest in agency history for employee violations. He also mentioned a Thursday press conference by INS officials in Washington announcing plans to use their largest budget ever to add more U.S. Border Patrol agents and workplace inspectors--especially in California.

“Maybe the pieces are starting to fall into place,” Reed said.