My company has a foundry in KC MO which employs between 900 - 1000 people. About 4 weeks ago the INS said it wanted to come into HR and check employment records. The next day 106 employees never showed up for work. While the company fulfilled its obligation demanding documentation what they didn't know is that such docu were forgeries.
So what is your plan? Shut down the plant for a period of time leaving the remaining 800 or so employees without jobs? Imprison the HR dept. for not being trained in being able to identify forged documents over legit. documents? Given the constant personnel changeover there it is unlikely anyone in HR was even involved in hiring any of the illegals.
We have since sent down one of our guys from our corp. headquarters to help in the hiring of now 200 employees and within a week, of the 40 people he had already hired, 20 had quit because they couldn't take working in the typical environment found in a foundry........
If you hire illegal you should go to jail. Period end of statement. There are leagal citizens out there who want work hire them. And as for the working conditions a foundery is cake walk compared to a refinery. I know. And down here they line up around the block for those jobs.
The IRS provides an 800 number that you call when you hire somebody. It takes about a minute for them to tell you if the name and the social security number match. My plan would be that a company that used this process would have a safe harbor from prosecution and that any company that did not use this process would be prosecuted to the max no matter what phony documents they had on file.
of the 40 people he had already hired, 20 had quit because they couldn't take working in the typical environment found in a foundry
It is nonsense that only illegals will do nasty work and the fact that your factory has 800 Americans working in it proves that. There is never any difficulty hiring either garbage men or plumbers. Both are nasty jobs but they pay great. Maybe the foundry should try offering a better salary and benefits package.
If a full 10% of a workforce that size consists of illegal aliens, then there is no reasonable way to assert that the management doesn't know they are hiring illegals. In that case, it's their own damn responsibility to figure out what to do! Maybe try paying US wages?
So what is your plan? Imprison the HR dept. for not being trained in being able to identify forged documents over legit. documents?
Print out the following and give it to your HR department.
Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program
Employment Verification Pilot Programs
http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/SAVE.htm
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 required the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Social Security Administration to conduct three employment verification pilot programs, the Basic Pilot, the Citizen Attestation Pilot, and the Machine-Readable Document Pilot programs. Since the INS became part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on March 1, 2003, the pilot programs now fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program. These pilot programs are the only means available for employers to verify that their newly hired employees are authorized to work in the United States.
The Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program - The Basic Pilot involves verification checks of the SSA and DHS databases, using an automated system to verify the employment authorization of all newly hired employees. Participation in the Basic Pilot Program is voluntary, and is free to participating employers.
The Basic Pilot:
The new law also requires the expansion of the Basic Pilot Program to all 50 states not later than December 1, 2004. The USCIS' SAVE Program and SSA plan to begin offering the Basic Pilot Program to employers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on December 1, 2004 on a first-come, first-served basis. If significantly more employers than anticipated choose to participate in the Basic Pilot Program, USCIS may have to limit the number of participants.
The Basic Employment Verification Pilot Program is now available on the Internet using a Web-Based Access method. This will allow employers to use the Basic Pilot system from any personal computer with access to an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
The Web-Based Access method offers several advantages over the Dial-Up method (personal computer with a modem), currently being used by employers participating in the pilot program. The Web-Based Access method eliminates the need for a modem and the connectivity problems associated with using a modem. It also does away with the requirement for an employer to have an analog phone line to access the Basic Pilot.
Once you are registered and have completed the Web-Based Tutorial (WBT) you can immediately begin using the Web-Based Access method of the Basic Pilot Program.
To register now for the Basic Pilot Web-Based Access method, go to https://www.vis-dhs.com/EmployerRegistration and follow the instructions.
If you have questions or need additional information on any of the topics found on the SAVE web site, please contact the SAVE Program at 202-514-2317.
More informtion can also be found here:
Services and Benefits SAVE Program
http://www.ins.gov/graphics/services/SAVE.htm
I'd like to see the INS be given more resources to conduct the kind of sweeps that it did at this plant. Clearly, this sweep did some good and is a step in the right direction. The company probably doesn't like it, but enough of these sweeps would go a long way towards solving the problem.
If this plant did due diligence to ensure that workers were American citizens or legal immigrants, then there should be no criminal or civil liability. Due diligence should include training to spot fake documentation and make use of accessible services for verification. There have already been other posts on this thread outlining some of those programs. Due diligence does not mean that HR people won't make mistakes sometimes, and the point of these sweeps should not be to persecute the plant.
One important point is that the sweep has already cost the plant a good deal of money. Losing 10% of a workforce is tough. I suspect that there was some loss of productivity. Hiring people to cover those jobs takes time which means money. Training the new people takes time and money. All of these costs should be incentives for the plant to do a better job of screening new employees.
I agree that we need to remove some of the undue burdens from the plants. We don't have a huge problem of illegal immigrants from Ireland. A job candidate who is obviously Irish does not need to be investigated as thoroughly as a candidate who is obviously Mexican. That's unfortunate, but it's reality. We need to stop bothering plants when they take steps to mitigate the obvious illegal immigrant risks.
The other good thing about the sweep is that those 106 illegal immigrants didn't get their next paycheck. I'm sure that many of them found other jobs fairly soon, but they likely didn't make as much as they did at a job where they had some experience. Instead, they had to go through training and probationary periods in their new jobs. If the next sweep knocks them out of their new job, they'll be forced back into the same problem again. Eventually, the word will get back to Mexico that coming here isn't as easy as it used to be, and we'll have fewer illegal immigrants making the attempt.
Bill
>>So what is your plan? Shut down the plant for a period of time leaving the remaining 800 or so employees without jobs? Imprison the HR dept. for not being trained in being able to identify forged documents over legit. documents? Given the constant personnel changeover there it is unlikely anyone in HR was even involved in hiring any of the illegals.<<
If nobody in HR was involved in hiring any of the illegals, who do you think was? Can your company survive with that man being in jail for 106 days? (1 day per illegal)