Wise Shift by the INS

It shouldn’t require any further calculations to conclude that work site raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service are not the most efficient way to catch illegal workers. Sometimes violent, the sweeps also often violate the constitutional rights of American citizens of Latino heritage and other legal residents. The results have produced successful lawsuits against the INS, with the taxpayers picking up the bill.

So the INS has made the right and smart choice by cutting back on its workplace enforcement programs and turning instead to cracking down on smugglers who spirit workers into the United States and employers who contract for these workers. The smugglers, document forgers and employers who conspire with them are as criminally culpable as those who work here illegally.

The new INS strategy is aimed at getting the maximum effect with limited forces--1,750 hard-pressed agents--which means applying some detective work to patrol duties. For instance, INS agents will increase their surveillance of company audits to try to determine which workers might be in the country illegally. Names are being taken. Over time, officials say, it will become harder and harder for illegal immigrants to escape notice and deportation. In the meantime, the Border Patrol will continue to resist illegal entry at the frontier, its proper and No. 1 assignment.

Since 1986, a provision of the Immigration Act has called for penalizing employers who knowingly hire workers here illegally, but the INS, short on manpower, has done little to enforce that part of the law. When raids are ordered, the results are often brutal. A recent study by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights entitled “Portrait of Injustice” examined 235 INS raids around the country and showed, its authors said, that agents routinely violated the constitutional rights of workers.

“INS officials have used physical, verbal and psychological abuse, relied on racial and ethnic stereotyping, and denied rights of due process . . . ,” the study says.

Despite the tough tactics, follow-up studies show, the raids have no significant impact on migration patterns. As long as jobs are available, the workers will come.

The INS decision to crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal laborers is a sound step, maximizing the limited manpower of the INS and sending a signal to employers that they are being watched.