Jail, Fine Possible for Owner of Restaurant

As a boy growing up poor in South Korea, Tong Yuon Joe regarded America as a place to fulfill his dream.

But the Simi Valley restaurant owner never thought that might include jail time.

The 44-year-old Joe, owner of the Simi 4 Deli and a 1979 immigrant to the United States, recently pleaded guilty to employing four undocumented Mexican workers, some for as long as five years.

Joe, who is married and the father of two young children, could receive up to six months confinement and an $8,000 fine when he is sentenced today in federal court in Los Angeles. The minimum possible sentence for the misdemeanor is a $1,000 fine.

“I know I’m guilty. I know I made a mistake. But I couldn’t fire those people,” Joe said from the kitchen of his busy Tapo Street delicatessen. “They were good workers who never did anything wrong.”

Joe, who maintains he employed the four out of humanitarian concern, entered his plea July 7 after a monthlong investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Prompted by a tip from Rep. Elton Gallegly’s office, agents found that although Joe paid his workers well above the minimum wage, he did it under the table without providing benefits or withholding state and federal income taxes and Social Security taxes.

Nora Bomar, spokeswoman for Gallegly, said his Oxnard office received a resident’s tip and forwarded it to the INS.

“That’s pretty standard,” Bomar said.

Like the “three-strikes” law in felony criminal cases, punishment for those convicted of employing undocumented workers falls into three tiers.

For a first offense such as Joe’s, an employer could be sentenced to a maximum of six months behind bars and fined from $250 to $2,000 for each undocumented worker.

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A second offense carries the same confinement period, but fines are increased to between $2,000 and $5,000 for each worker. A third offense, however, is much more serious, with fines for each worker amounting to between $3,000 and $10,000.

It seems unlikely that Joe will go to jail, since federal prosecutors recommended only probation and a $3,000 fine.

No Ventura County employer has ever gone to jail for hiring illegal immigrants, according to the INS. Just one has been jailed in the region--the operator of a Los Angeles clothes-making plant who received six months in jail this year.

The largest fine levied in the seven-county Los Angeles region was $95,000, exacted from a Gardena card club in 1994, officials said.

Although Joe’s admitted crime is commonplace, investigators said they rarely come across an employer with such apparent altruistic motives.

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“Usually the employers we catch exploit these people because they are a cheap source of labor,” said George Guzman, INS regional chief employer investigator. “Cases like these, although they do happen, are few and far between.”

It has been nearly two decades since Joe left his home in Seoul to join his brother and other family members who had already settled in Los Angeles.

For the next 10 years, he said, he worked hard, sometimes up to 16 hours a day, saving money to one day open his own business.

During the day he pumped gas at service stations. At night he scrubbed floors, cleaned restrooms and emptied trash in Los Angeles office buildings.

On weekends, he’d take odd jobs.

“When I first got here it was hard, and I was always tired,” he said. “It’s still hard now and I work just as much as I did back then.”

Joe opened his Simi Valley business in 1989 and, according to the INS, hired the undocumented workers in 1992.

INS officials said that the workers, all of whom were in their 20s, failed to provide Joe with any documents, fraudulent or not, designating them as legal.

Additionally, Joe failed to file an I-9 employment eligibility document for each of the employees. And, rather than pay them with an official check, he paid them in cash every Saturday, court documents show.

Since 1986, all employers have been required to file I-9s to check the legal status of prospective employees with the government.

INS officials said fraudulent documents are readily available for workers who filter illegally into this country, and I-9s are a tool to detect fake green cards and counterfeit resident status documents.

Joe said he was unaware of the requirement.

In retrospect, Joe said that he shouldn’t have hired the workers, but that their experience and longing to carve a better life for their families mirrored his own.

“I’m ready to pay fines or whatever they want me to do,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to do this again.”