26% of Immigrants at New Jobs Found to Be Illegal

In the first measure of how fake immigration documents are widely used to obtain employment, a government test project has found that one of four newly employed immigrants at 230 Southland firms lacked legal authority to work in the United States.

The results, released Thursday by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, were based on nearly 11,500 new hires at the 230 businesses involved in a project begun last fall. The agency’s work-site verification project allows employers to check the immigration status of new hires against an INS database.

According to the test, 2,948 people, or 26%, presented invalid work documents between October and mid-May.

A cross-section of employers is taking part in the controversial project, but nearly all participating businesses are in Santa Ana and City of Industry--areas chosen for the pilot project because many illegal immigrants have long been known to be employed there.

Although INS officials cautioned that the project’s results were not likely to be representative of California, they called the preliminary findings striking. For the first time, officials said, the test provides solid data on the proliferation of forged documents that have allowed people to circumvent immigration laws.

Citing the success of the California test, the Clinton administration announced Thursday that it is expanding the project to include the nation’s largest meatpacking operations--an industry in which many immigrants have gone to work. The administration, which has been criticized for being soft on immigration issues and is trying to take a more aggressive stance in the election year, plans to broaden the project to 1,000 employers nationwide by year’s end.

Administration officials said the agreement with meatpacking companies involves 48 plants employing 56,000 workers in 10 states. The participating meatpackers include IBP, Monfort Inc., Excel Corp. and Beef America.

“Most businesses in this country want to hire lawful workers,” said INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. “But they have faced obstacles in trying to comply with the law because of difficulties in distinguishing between legitimate and fraudulent documents.”

Robert Bach, the top INS policy official in Washington, said he was more concerned than surprised by the results of the California test. He said it shows that the verification system could be a significant tool in weeding out illegal immigrants in the workplace.

“The system is opening that many jobs to authorized workers,” he said, referring to nearly 3,000 jobs that were vacated by workers who failed the verification process.

The INS test actually may understate the extent of the problem because the verification system does not apply to workers who say they are U.S. citizens. These workers can show a U.S. passport or other identification, such as a Social Security card and driver’s license. Immigration experts say those documents are easily forged as well, and critics say the INS system fails to catch those illegal workers.

INS officials said the agency plans to launch a new program by the end of the summer that would enable employers to check Social Security numbers against the database at the Social Security Administration.

Some immigration experts, however, questioned the California findings, noting that the INS has a vested interest in the new system’s success. They said the agency has no system of ensuring that the jobs will be filled by legal workers. Other critics reiterated concerns that the verification plan may violate privacy rights, increase discrimination against immigrants, and ultimately result in creating a kind of police state in which everyone must carry national identification.

“My concern is the constitutional rights of both employers and employees,” said Enrique Arevalo, a South Pasadena immigration lawyer and former president of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. of Los Angeles County.

Arevalo was surprised by the project’s findings, saying he thought the prevalence of workers using fake documents was not nearly that high, even in areas such as Santa Ana and Industry. But he said it also indicates that employers lack personnel trained to detect fake documents.

“Apparently the INS hasn’t been doing a good job in shutting down these false document shops,” he said.

Carl Shusterman, a former INS lawyer who has a private practice in immigration law in Los Angeles, said he believes that the findings more or less depict the extent of the illegal immigrants in the region’s workplaces. “It’s such an across-the-board phenomenon in Southern California,” he said.

INS officials acknowledged that they were concerned about protecting the rights of workers. But officials said the test system has so far turned out to be quick, efficient and highly accurate.

Of the 11,479 new employees whose immigration and other work documents were checked by the verification system, officials said, only 30 were believed to be inaccurately identified as unauthorized workers who in fact were legal. In most of those cases, the problem occurred because the workers were new permanent residents who had not yet shown up in the INS database.

The verification system involves three steps. Newly hired immigrants must show a work authorization form or a permanent resident card, commonly called a green card. Virtually all of these contain an alien registration number.

In the first step, an employer enters the alien registration number in the computer, which then ties into the INS database to verify worker authorization. That electronic verification is done within minutes, and most of the employees who were cleared by the system passed that first stage, officials said.

If an employee’s work authorization is not verified electronically in that first step, the employer provides the INS the Social Security number and other personal information about the worker, which is checked manually by INS agents. If that check still does not confirm that an employee is authorized to work, then the worker has 30 days in which to visit the INS district office to prove he or she can legally work. During that 30-day period, a worker cannot be dismissed.

In most of the nearly 3,000 cases of employees whose paperwork could not be verified, the workers did not show up for work after being asked to submit further evidence of their immigration status, INS officials said.

At Vans Inc., a sneaker company based in Orange, executives said eight employees never returned after an electronic check could not verify their work authorization. But they said the real value was in the quick verification of legal workers.

“It’s made our life a lot easier,” said Craig Gosselin, vice president and general counsel at Vans, which in the past has faced sanctions from the INS for employing illegal immigrants.

* PRENATAL CARE: State will require proof of residency from applicants. A3