Salvador Martinez-Gonzalez with Bill Clinton:
Salvador Martinez-Gonzalez with Bill Clinton:
AP
By Sonya Ross, Associated Press writer
February 14, 1996
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton told U.S. businesses yesterday that he will bar them from federal contracts if they hire illegal immigrants.
He accompanied his order with a rhetorical flourish -- "American jobs belong to America's legal workers" -- but the White House denied any election-year politics were involved. Aides said the order was needed to deal with a worsening problem of illegal immigration.
The order prohibits, for one year, federal contracts for companies that knowingly hire illegal workers.
It is intended specifically to target construction companies. White House officials said the order was inspired in part by the arrests last year of 34 illegal workers who were hired as carpenters and skilled craftsmen to help build a federal building in Atlanta.
The order also applies to the thousands of vendors who provide such services as cleaning government office buildings, landscaping military bases and operating cafeterias in courthouses.
"It is against the law for businesses to hire workers who are illegal immigrants," the president said. "When it comes to enforcing our nation's immigration laws, we mean business."
Congress in 1986 passed a law aimed at restricting illegal immigration by prosecuting employers who hire illegal workers. But enforcement of the law has lagged because employers have been able to argue, for example, that they thought a bogus Social Security card provided by an undocumented worker was valid.
Government vendors have been required to abide by that law as well, but there has been no prohibition on violators competing for new federal contracts.
The order also prohibits employers from using the threat of sanctions as a reason to discriminate on the basis of ethnic origin. President Clinton instructed employers to confirm workers' eligibility by reviewing documents of all new hires, not just those who were born in other countries. The order, which aims to take away the lure of high-paying jobs, is part of a three-pronged immigration strategy that also includes strengthening border enforcement and allocating more money to detain and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.
"We are deporting record numbers of criminals and other deportable aliens," President Clinton said. "But all this will not stem the tide of illegal immigration if we do not reduce the job magnet."
Besides the Atlanta case, the order also is based on an Immigration and Naturalization Service operation in six Southeastern states last year that removed more than 4,000 illegal workers from jobs in construction, manufacturing, food processing, farms, restaurants and hotels.
Illegal immigration is a potent political issue in a number of states, especially in the West and Southwest.
But White House press secretary Mike McCurry said, "There is no grounds to suggest that this is an executive order based on politics. This president has consistently said he would do a better job of protecting our borders and making sure that immigration to the United States occurs in a legal fashion."
Bush Open to Accepting Illegal Aliens
Bar the White House
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