LAT: Employers of Illegal Immigrants Face Little Risk of Penalty

Employers of Illegal Immigrants Face Little Risk of Penalty
By Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writer
May 29, 2005


....The escalating debate over illegal immigration focuses primarily on those who sneak across the border, not on the jobs that lure them here or the people who hire them. When authorities do crack down on employers, it often is to stem terrorism, human smuggling or large-scale criminal operations.

In fact, the owners of hotels, farms, restaurants and retail stores who hire illegal workers — never widely sanctioned to begin with — now face a negligible risk of being penalized.

From 1993 to 1997, the number of arrests at work sites nationwide soared from 7,630 to 17,554, before plunging to 445 in 2003. The number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003.

About 7 million illegal immigrants worked in the U.S. last year, said the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization....

***

"We've seen an effective end to work-site enforcement," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "To whatever degree there is enforcement, the only people on the receiving end of it are the illegals, because there are no fines of employers, practically none."...


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-employers29may29,0,4076225,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

:sarcasm:

When George Senior refers to his own grandchildren as, "the little brown ones" their is obviously a lack of respect going on.

arguing and lobbying against enforcement of sanctions against business for hiring undocumented workers.

liberals will side w/ conservatives on..

punish the employers...they are screwing Americans by
hiring under the table, union bust (meat packing, hotel factory)
as well as exploiting the illegals.

If enforcement and penalization (whether you're an amnesty
or a deportation sider) of corporations/business happens
we can stop this massive underground economy plus the further
erosion of workers rights and wages.

At least in most cases. When I hear the business-owning Rush believers blame softie liberals for the illegal immigration levels, I enjoy pointing out that the contractors trolling the streets for day laborers are usually driving pickups with Bush/Cheney bumperstickers even in the liberal capital of California.

Liberals will hire illegals so they have a chance to make it. Conservatives hire them to save money.

...who are getting exploited by a government which serves the interests of huge businesses which benefit from desperation everywhere else down the line.

...problem isn't with the small businessperson who hires the immigrant. It's usually the bigger business above them who pushes their profts margins so thinly that they have to fuck their employees (immigrant or not) in order to survive.

Shipler has a section on garment workers in Los Angeles, and the portrayal of the workers is very sympathetic, obviously. But it's also relative sympathetic of their employers. They get orders from big designers who refuse to pay them, or take discounts that aren't set out by contract, and they wait to pay until the last possible minute. And free trade is the sword hanging all their heads. There's a real power imbalance between large businesses and small businesses that drives some of the worst realities for labor in America.

It's so obvious to me that the answer isn't to punish the people on the bottom (the immigrants and their small business employers) but to figure out a way to stop the big businesses from exploiting small businesses and to stop them buying all the legislation they need to do so from the government. It's the big businessess with the biggest profit margins, and those profits are being help back from small businesses and their employees, and that money is buying the political power to perpetuate that situation.

in California I've seen and heard too many contractors and small business owners talking like Michael Savage while working their mostly Latino day workers like dogs. They garner no sympathy from me.
I've managed to find some decent contractors who treat their crews decently but it isn't easy. Screwing the illegals is par for the course here. I've lived in other states where the casual labor pool was predominantly legal workers and contracting cost much more but it was the going rate for everyone.

The best ways to curb excesses by big business are government regulation and collective labor movements, neither of which have any traction these days. The fact that bigger businesses are squeezing smaller ones doesn't justify screwing the workers. It's too bad more Americans can't break away from reality TV programming to take in the reality of what's happening in our country. Why aren't we in the midst of a labor revolt?

The paragraph you snipped: "From 1993 to 1997, the number of arrests at work sites nationwide soared from 7,630 to 17,554, before plunging to 445 in 2003. The number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003," now has that staggering statistic removed.

It now reads: "From 1993 to 2003, the number of arrests at work sites nationwide went from 7,630 to 445. The number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003." The high of 17,554 has been removed. I wonder if the reduction from 17,554 to 445 was just too incredible to print. It certainly appears that it was squelched.

There doesn't seem to be a problem with the numbers:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2003/2003ENF.pdf

"The number of (work site) arrests rose significantly from 7,554 in fiscal year 1994 to a high of 17,554 in 1997, an increase of 132 percent. The number of arrests declined sharply in the next six years, dropping to 445 in 2003."

.rog.

They just never seem to do much about it. It's so much easier to carp about those illegals and stemmin the tide at the borders.

and your research.

That would be my guess why it was changed. The earlier phrasing was a not so subtle way of pointing that out.

her e-mail address would be anna.gorman@latimes.com.

Again, the writer's e-mail is anna.gorman@latimes.com; the LAT managing editor's e-mail is dean.baquet@latimes.com.

enforcement increased while under Bush it declined. Can't have Clinton looking good, can we?

Ultimately, illegal immigrants and US workers are in the same fix. The only ones who benefit from US workers squaring off against desperate, poverty-stricken people looking to try to make a living are business owners who profit at the expense of both sides. Americans are forced to compete against workers below minimum wage, and the illegal immigrants are left without labor standards and without any protection at all. Both workers lose, but the greedy business wins.

As long as politicians are bankrolled by special interests, especially big business, one should not expect drastic changes anytime soon.

If you have to pay two, three, or four times as much for certain necessities because workers are now at least treated like human beings, then I would argue it is an issue of social justice that you pay the workers their fair reward at the check-out counter. It is the least you can do besides bitching about the consequential rise in prices.

By focusing limited punitive measures on some token minority of illegal immigrants, the corporatist regime both
(1) intimidates the illegal immigrants and decrease the likelihood that they'll complain about below-minimum wages, coercive employment practices, or unhealthy working conditions, and
(2) invites the sympathies of the left for the plight of economically exploited people.
Both effects of the 'enforcement strategy' (just more kabuki) serves the primary objective of economic oppression and the rape of the working class. (At one time in my life, I'd regard the language I just used as mere 'Marxist rhetoric' but the more familiar I've gotten with the tactics employed by rabid corporatism the more it seems moderate to me.)

...making so much money off cheap labor in the US and in other countries.

even less risk of penalty.