I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I saw this and thought I’d post it and see the responses later.
It seems that after a ten-month investigation into illegal aliens and ID theft, ICE arrested over 1,200 illegals. Most arrests were for being here illegally, but some were for the ID theft itself. (All good in my book, the only room for improvement being the addition of a few zeroes on the number. I offer that in the spirit of full disclosure, knowing many here will disagree.) But here is the issue of the debate: The company employing these illegals—in direct conflict with the law—seems to be getting off with no penalties whatsoever. NONE. As can be seen here:
Now, the investigation into the identity theft is still continuing, but how can the company get away with this. What’s that? Maybe they didn’t know? Well, that’s just what they would like us to believe:
Even if that is true, I don’t think it gives them a pass. But we have this:
(bolding mine)
So they would never knowingly hire illegals, but they DO know that a raid arersting illegals would remove up to 40% of their 13,000 workers? (a 5,200 estimate by the way.) WTF? Am I reading this wrong?
Questions: How can the government turn a blind eye to Swift’s actions? If it does not, is ICE the one to go after them or is it some other branch?
If the goal is to reduce immigration, which is not only a crime in an of itself, but one that spawns other problems like ID theft, isn’t the government obligated to go after the employer as well? If for no other reason than doing so is a much more effective means to stem the tide than going after 12,000,000 illegals individually?
NOT necessarily. That would at best provide a prima facie defense. Presumably the government could try and prove that Swift knowingly employed people who were providing false ID to meet the I-9 form needs.
In answer to the OP, it is much harder to prosecute a case against the employer than it is to prosecute a case against the illegal alien. The illegal alien either does or does not have proper documentation; intent and knowledge are irrelevant. For the employer, intent and knowledge are relevant for successful prosecution.
Yes, that’s true, but how much of an onus is put on the employer to verify that the documents are not valid? Especially in the case of identity theft, where the documents would presumably be valid, even though illegally obtained?
I should think that unless they could show that Swift knew the driver’s license was being passed by each new employee to the next guy in line, or was accepting black & white photocopies that were stuck in a baggie and ironed, they’d have a hard time proving that Swift should have known the IDs were false.
Did Swift try to verify the SSNs, and if there were issues, did they follow up?
What’s the verification process. (We discussed this before.) Is it that the SSN exists somewhere, or is there some attempt to match the sex and age of the applicant?
Did Swift pay these people at the same level as the 60% legals, or is there an obvious correlation between immigration status and pay and benefits?
I agree with the OP in general - there will be no decrease in the supply until the demand dries up due to penalties for not doing the proper diligence in checking papers upon hiring.
True. But with the numbers involved here, that seems, IMO, an unrealistic defense. I think it more likely, again, based on the numbers involved, and the statements they made, that this passage might be applicable: (bolding mine)
Also, here is what the law states regarding the non-conspiracy charges:
Note that the three thresholds mentioned are connect by “or”. Based on this, it amazes me even more that Swift is not being held acountable.
I also read about this in today’s Houston Chronicle. While Swift may be beating the rap for the moment (I have a feeling that general public opinion may force the government to attempt filing charges after all) from what I read so far they’ve actually had to shut down the plants in question, and thus will suffer financially from their, let’s be charitable and call it rather loosely-controlled, hiring practices.
Now I have never agreed with Magellan01’s view of illegals being some sort of scourge of the nation, but fair’s fair. It simply is not credible that a company with the size and financial resources of Swift could manage to unknowingly hire illegals as more than 40% of its total workforce. I rectruit for a far smaller outfit and we incur no difficulty or significant financial impact in verifying whether our employees are here legally or not. I say throw the book at 'em, then go over and pick it up and throw it at 'em again.
They can be aware of the statistical likelyhood of false identities among immigrants (thus the illegal part of illegal aliens). That is different than knowing who is providing false identification. American companies are not in the police business nor can they be. it’s illegal to ask many questions regarding employment on an application. Discriminatory questions about nationality, and arrest records are not allowed.
So basically what you’re trying to argue Magellan01 is that if a prospective employee shows up looking for a job with all of his forms of identification in order, a valid SSN, a drivers license, what have you, they still shouldn’t be employed? Because they look like a Mexican?
And how is this not, “Knowledge cannot be inferred solely on the basis of an individual’s accent or foreign appearance.”
In a nutshell, yes, but it’s rather more complicated than that - more details here. . If the documents presented to fulfill the I-9 requirements appear to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them, employers are likely to be very careful about asking for further verification for fear of being accused of discriminating against employees on the basis of race and/or national origin. There is a 500-plus page book devoted to the ins, outs, and case law of completing the I-9 form, not to mention what is and is not acceptable to ask people in the course of completing it. Even the oh-so-oversimplified USCIS employer I-9 manual is 36 pages long.
Illegal discrimination against people who are, in fact, legally authorized to work in the U.S. is a real problem - so much so that there is an office of the Department of Justice devoted to educating employers about it. They also publish a handy employer compliance guide.
There is currently no legal requirement for employers to verify the authenticity of documents presented for I-9 purposes, as long as they reasonably appear to be geniune. Besides, there are several thousand different formats for something as basic as a U.S. birth certificate; exactly how would employers deal with that under the current system?
Federal law, specifically the Immigration and Nationality Act. The penalties even for minor paperwork violations can really add up, and if it’s determined that the employer has a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized workers, there can even be jail time involved. Details here.
The Swift case ain’t over yet; I’ll be shocked if they get off completely scot-free. I bet there will be a substantial fine, at a bare minimum, provided the investigation isn’t completely botched.
I am curious, too. From what little I have heard about it (I have done no research myself), it could be as little as Swift making an official data request like this:
*SSN of applicant: 123-45-6789
Name of applicant: Mlees
Felony convictions: None
Please verify SSN 123-45-6789 as current, valid, and assigned to Mlees.
Please verify Mlees’ conviction record.*
That’s it. So, if someone dug my SSN out of some database somewhere, they can use it to apply for a job or a photo ID.
What is further interesting is that the Social Security Administration does not tell ICE or the Homeland Security Department that there were 763 requests for verification on my SSN in the last 6 months…
It seems that I heard after the raids that of the seven(?) plants raided, up to 10% of the force in each plant was nabbed. Given that the INS has a less than perfect track record, could Swift have simply been making the argument that 40%+ of their work force has Hispanic names and they feared a mass grab?
Now, I suspect that Swift will actually be found to have been lax on their I-9s and that the Fed agents, today, were simply noting that Swift is not currently being charged (until they can get the evidence from the arrested workers about how shoddy their papers actually were).
Uhhhhhh, no. That’s not what I’m arguing. And if you read the article you might have gleaned that the people arrested were not all Mexican. They also arrested illegals from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Laos, Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries. But since you’re having such a hard time understanding what evidently everyone else got rather easily, let me spoon feed it to you. There was a ten-month investigation into illegal immigration and identity theft, targeting Swift (as far as we know, possibly others). Over 1,200 illegals got arrested. Now even ignoring their claims about 40% being at risk of being arrested (for reasons offered by others), that’s an awful lot of people. That indicates to me willful disregard for the law. I suggest you read the portions of the law I cited.
We have laws on the books to deal with this type of activity. Some of those laws address the illegals themselves. Other address the companies who hire them. Both laws are an attempt to help solve an illegal immigration problem. Dealing just with the illegals themselves is not nearly as effective and efficient as going after the employers. Ergo, my post and the questions I included. See how that works, now?
As others have stated, we probably don’t have the full story now. If Swift did everything they were supposed to, maybe they’re off the hook. If not, they’ll hopefully got the shit slammed out of them in fines and possibly jail time if their behavior was particularly egregious or consipiritorial.
Tell me, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you don’t think that we should enforce our immigration laws. Is that right? If not, what, specifically, do you object to?
If the I-9s and documentation are all in order and Swift followed procedures correctly, then they ought to be fine. And it’s really not that big an “if.”
It’s not suprising that the meat packing industry is going to have more I-9 fraud perpetrated against it. It’s an awfully hard job that doesn’t really require English language skills, just a good work ethic. It’s the type of job that attracts both illegal immigrants and legal immigrants and their descendants.
I don’t find it outside the realm of possibilty that employee document fraud could be encountered and a large number illegal immigrants could be caught even without Swift breaking any laws or regulations. It could be the case that Swift didn’t follow correct enough procedures or outrightly disregarded them. But, from the information presented here, making an immediate judgement towards that seems premature.