Homeland Security Presses Employers
To Police War on Immigrant Workers

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is taking a leading and aggressive role to increase worksite immigration enforcement, in line with the Bush Administration goal to deprive millions of undocumented workers of jobs where they are currently employed.

Employers have been warned to fire immigrants that do not have proper Social Security cards or other credentials or they could face civil and possibly criminal charges for failure to comply. Under the new enforcement rule, employers will receive a general notice from DHS outlining their obligations to follow immigration laws and the steps necessary to prove they have attempted to satisfy the requirements.

If an employer does not comply, the new rule states that DHS can use that non-compliance as evidence that it had "constructive knowledge" of the immigration laws and the failure to respond to "no-match" letters can be evidence used in civil and criminal actions brought by DHS.

DHS has also announced it is planning to issue a proposed rule requiring all federal contractors to participate in the agency's electronic employment verification system. This would add 200,000 companies to the DHS system.

That the Department of Homeland Security is leading the witch-hunt against undocumented workers carries the strong implication that millions of foreign immigrants, particularly those from Mexico and other Latin American countries, are potential "security risks" that warrant surveillance.

The DHS proposed rule has received virtually unanimous opposition in comments from more than 5,000 business firms, unions and immigration advocacy groups, calling on the department to abandon its rule, arguing that it would impose serious burdens on employers, cause millions of workers to lose their jobs and create severe dislocations in the economy.

"The proposed new regulations target people who babysit our children, who care for our grandparents, who pick and prepare our food," says Eliseo Medina, vice president of the Service Employees International Union. "These proposals will intensify a wave of enforcement strategies that have already failed, leaving family tragedies and human misery in their wake."

A statement by the United Food and Commercial Workers said that the new rules "would throw the doors open to racial discrimination to whole classes of people by placing an undue burden on workers who sound foreign and look foreign, particularly on the tens of millions of Hispanic- and Asian-Americans who would face greater scrutiny in the workplace."

Millions of undocumented workers are a substantial part of the workforce in construction, agriculture, health care and hotel and restaurant industries. They are needed for these industries to function. Let's recognize that they are here to stay.

What sense does it make to spend the nation's energy to drive them off their jobs, to kindle a bonfire of bitterness and resentment, while destroying a fundamental principle of American democracy?

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