New laws shift immigration responsibilities - Washington Report - Column

Discount Store News, Nov 4, 1991 by Ken Rankin

New Laws Shift Immigration Responsibilities

Five years ago, against the advice of retail industry leaders, Congress enacted a sweeping immigration "reform" bill that lawmakers predicted would curb the flow of illegal immigration into the United States. Now Congress appears ready to eat those words.

The 1986 new law sought to turn employers into immigration agents by requiring them to screen illegal aliens out of the work force. But sensitive to concerns of Hispanics that these new immigration status verification requirements would promote job discrimination against applicants who looked or sounded foreign, Congress added provisions to penalize businesses for employment bias based on national origin.

The result: a complex set of new federal hiring rules that have left employers in and out of the discount industry walking a tightrope for the past five years.

On one hand, employers face strict civil or criminal sanctions for failing to secure and retain documentation of the immigration status of all job applicants.

On the other hand, those who ask for too much documentation from job seekers, or who otherwise discharge their verification duties too vigorously, risk even stiffer federal job discrimination penalties.

It's another classic Washington Catch-22 scenario that frustrates businesses and employment applicants alike.

Worse yet, shifting the responsibility for immigration control from the federal government to private employers has proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful.

Despite the employer verification requirements "illegal aliens continue to pour into this country," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told Congress. "A cottage industry in counterfeit and fraudulent documents has flourished, and an increasingly lucrative black market in smuggling aliens has thrived."

The anti-discrimination provisions of the law have been even less successful. One in every five employers responding to the U.S. General Accounting Office survey last year acknowledged engaging in some form of employment discrimination as a result of the new law. And immigration-related job discrimination charges filed with the Justice Department are increasing at an annual rate of 37%.

Finally, late last month a light blinked on somewhere on Capitol Hill. Hatch unveiled corrective legislation to repeal those 5-year-old employer sanctions and verification requirements, and to shift full responsibility for halting unlawful immigration back to the federal government. Significantly, that measure has strong bipartisan support from legislators representing all points on the political spectrum.