http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-fi-smallbizimmigration22may22,1,4682146.story
LABOR
Guarding against illegal workers
By Daniel Costello
Times Staff Writ
IN an ironic twist, the company hired by the U.S. government in 1999 to help build a fence along the Mexican border to curb the flow of undocumented workers itself recently ran afoul of immigration laws.
In March, two senior executives of Golden State Fence Co. of Riverside were each sentenced to six months of home confinement and fined a combined $300,000 for employing scores of illegal workers.
Golden State Fence, which declined to talk about the case, also paid a $4.7-million fine, a sum that would send many small companies straight into bankruptcy.
“It’s hard to find a better example of how necessary it is for some employers to hire undocumented workers in order to stay in business,” said Niels Frenzen, a USC immigration law professor and director of the law school’s Immigration Clinic.
How to verify employees’ legal status is a growing concern for small businesses. Although the current illegal immigration crackdown is being felt by all employers, much of the burden is falling on the owners of small companies that hire a disproportionate share of undocumented immigrants in an array of industries, including retail and agriculture, experts say.
This year, federal immigration officials raided restaurants in California and 16 other states and arrested nearly 200 illegal immigrants working for a janitorial company. That followed similar high-profile raids in Maryland, Indiana and Kentucky that amounted to some of the largest and harshest penalties against employers in history.
In all, the number of employees arrested for workforce violations has increased to 3,667 in 2006 from 485 in 2002, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
For the entire article go to LATimes.Com
Corra has been stressing to its clients that it doesn’t pay to hire undocumented workers. You may think this is a cheaper way to go, but it gets mighty expensive if the government should decide to turn your company into a poster child for bad business practices. So the bargain may be dearer than you first perceive.
Like any controversial issue there are at least two points of view. Legitimate cases can be made for either perspective. That said, if the government is to discourage illegal workers and the companies that hire them then it certainly is prudent to crack down on these businesses as well as the immigrants themselves. Corra believes this at least demonstrates conviction on the part of our government, and that perhaps the most complicit factor is being punished for breaking the law.
For you, the business person trying to stay out of trouble, we suggest a careful pre-employment screening program. You should always run a Social Security Trace, not only to confirm the number is legitimate but that it actually belongs to your job candidate. You should run a Criminal Check and a Motor Vehicle Search to confirm your candidate has a legitimate license and that it is free of ugly blemishes, like DUI’s, etc.
It’s no joke. For a few bucks an ounce of prevention is worth the embarrassment as well as the forty pounds of cure. So do yourself a favor, check them out before you hire.
