U.S. Agency Reviews INS Program

Concerned about possible job discrimination but anxious to retain an important enforcement tool, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner said Monday that the Clinton administration has launched an independent review of an INS screening program widely used in Southern California workplaces.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that investigates discrimination complaints, has begun scrutinizing the INS program to see if legal immigrants have been wrongly barred from employment at area firms, Meissner said during a visit to Los Angeles.

The nation’s top immigration official voiced fears that some workers may have been wrongly fired from their jobs--though she stressed that the INS has received no complaints of discrimination linked to the program. The INS sought the independent review and is picking up the $50,000 price tag, she said.

Despite agency concerns about discrimination, Meissner called the screening effort an essential tool to remove illegal immigrants from the nation’s workplaces.

“This creates a reliable way for employers to comply with the law,” Meissner said.

Critics have complained that the screening initiative--launched almost two years ago in Santa Ana and the city of Commerce and now in use at 174 area employers and more than 1,000 nationwide--may be used to deny jobs to people here legally. The program allows participating employers limited computer access to INS data.

“For some employers, the easiest response is to weed out all immigrants--or even all people who fit the stereotype of an immigrant,” said Thomas A. Saenz, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who applauded the new, independent review.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, officials said, will attempt to contact affected workers, using public service advertisements and community contacts. The process will be confidential and divorced from the INS, officials said, and will not be used to identify illegal immigrants. The commission is expected to report its findings this fall.

The new review comes as the INS is bolstering efforts in the nation’s job sites. As part of its overhaul of immigration law, Congress last year directed the INS to develop a variety of new workplace screening pilot programs. But lawmakers also raised the legal bar for employees to prove workplace discrimination based on immigration status--underscoring congressional ambivalence about imposing new requirements on businesses.

All employers participating in the screening efforts do so on a volunteer basis. Civil libertarians and others are strongly opposed to a mandatory work site verification program, which many liberals and conservatives alike view as a Big Brother-like infringement on people’s rights.

Under a 1986 law, employers nationwide are required to ensure that everyone hired has a legal right to work in the United States. Employers must review documents establishing employees’ identity and eligibility to work. Companies failing to comply face civil fines and even jail terms.

However, numerous studies have identified the system’s primary shortcoming: Employers often have no way to distinguish between legitimate documents and the counterfeit papers that are widely available, especially in Southern California.

The verification programs are aimed at overcoming this problem by allowing employers to match workers’ documentation--such as their green cards--against INS records.

However, in its first detailed report, the INS said Monday that the system in Southern California had initially failed to verify the legal status of an unexpectedly high number of new employees--4,183 as of February 1997. They account for 6% of all queries to the verification system here. The vast majority were fired from their jobs after they failed to take advantage of a kind of appeal procedure allowing them to contact the INS directly and straighten things out.

Some are probably illegal immigrants who would not be expected to contact the INS. But officials fear that many may have been victims of discrimination by employers wary about hiring immigrants whose documents were not quickly confirmed through the automated system.