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Some Glitches in the Crackdown on Undocumented Workers

llegal-immigrant crackdown looms

A plan to make employers fire workers with discrepancies in their records could snare many citizens and legal residents, critics say.

By Nicole Gaouette
Times Staff Writ

WASHINGTON — With the failure of immigration legislation in Congress this year, federal officials are planning a new crackdown on illegal immigrants that would force businesses to fire them or face stiff penalties. But the effort also could cause serious headaches for millions of U.S. citizens.

In the coming days, the Department of Homeland Security is expected to issue a rule outlining how businesses must respond when they receive notice that there are discrepancies in a worker’s tax records.

Many businesses simply ignore such notices now. Under the new rules, employees would have a limited time to contact the Social Security Administration to correct the information, or face termination.

The rule would transfer more responsibility for enforcement to companies — part of a Homeland Security effort to break through the complacency that some officials say the corporate world has about illegal workers.

The initiative follows warnings by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his department would toughen enforcement if efforts to overhaul the flawed immigration system failed. The discrepancies detected in Social Security employment records can sometimes flag illegal workers on the job.

However, the planned crackdown has provoked concern because many of the errors are benign: misspellings or incorrect birthdates in records of citizens or legal immigrants. There are errors in the records of an estimated 12.7 million U.S. citizens alone, and workers rushing to correct these discrepancies could swamp Social Security offices, much as new travel regulations have paralyzed government passport facilities this year.

And businesses are complaining about bearing the burden of enforcing a flawed immigration system.

for the entire story go to LATimes.com

Corra realizes as with many decisions to “get tough” the results may be far more perilous than originally imagined. What with all of us victims of the mixed mayhem of the government and public school system with all the incumbent errors in recording information, there will be more than a few glitches in figuring out who is who and where they belong.

It is but one of the reasons Corra urges background checks. We recommend the Social Security Trace to not only determine of the Social Security Number is legitimate but if it actually belongs to your candidate. The criminal background search is a necessity today.

Check them out before you hire.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.