Illegal Aliens: Significant Obstacles to Reducing Unauthorized Alien
Employment Exist (Testimony, 07/01/1999, GAO/T-GGD-99-105).
Jobs are a magnet drawing illegal aliens to the United States. Many
immigration experts believe that reducing the availability of employment
for illegal aliens must be a central part of any comprehensive strategy
to reduce illegal immigration. Significant numbers of aliens
unauthorized to work in the United States have used fraudulent documents
to circumvent the employment verification process. Employers seeking to
comply with the law can be deceived by these fraudulent papers, while
those seeking "cheap labor" can intentionally hire unauthorized aliens
under the guise of having complied with the employment verification
process. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has taken
steps to improve the employment verification process, yet considerable
obstacles remain. Worksite enforcement efforts by INS and the Department
of Labor have been limited, and INS' employer investigation efforts have
yielded modest results. INS is changing its approach to worksite
enforcement, but it is too soon to gauge its success.
--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------
REPORTNUM: T-GGD-99-105
TITLE: Illegal Aliens: Significant Obstacles to Reducing
Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist
DATE: 07/01/1999
SUBJECT: Immigration and naturalization law
Illegal aliens
Alien labor
Law enforcement
Fraud
Labor law
IDENTIFIER: INS Employment Verification Process
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United States General Accounting Office GAO
Testimony Before the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on
Immigration and Claims, House of Representatives For Release on
Delivery Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT Thursday July 1, 1999
ILLEGAL ALIENS Significant Obstacles to Reducing Unauthorized
Alien Employment Exist Statement of Richard M. Stana Associate
Director, Administration of Justice Issues General Government
Division GAO/T-GGD-99-105 Statement ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant
Obstacles to Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: I am pleased to be here
today to discuss the Immigration and Naturalization Service's
(INS) enforcement of workplace immigration laws. My statement will
outline the results presented in our recently completed report,
Illegal Aliens: Significant Obstacles to Reducing Unauthorized
Alien Employment Exist (GAO/GGD-99-33, April 2, 1999). One of the
primary magnets attracting illegal aliens to the United States is
jobs. Immigration experts believe that as long as opportunities
for employment exist, the incentive to enter the United States
illegally will persist, and efforts at the U.S. borders to prevent
illegal entry will be undermined. Therefore, these experts
believe that reducing the availability of employment for illegal
aliens should be an integral part of a comprehensive strategy to
reduce illegal immigration. In this statement, I make the
following points: * Significant numbers of aliens unauthorized to
work in the United States have used fraudulent documents to
circumvent the employment verification process designed to prevent
employers from hiring them, thereby undermining the effectiveness
of the process. Employers seeking to comply with the law can be
deceived by fraudulent documents, while those seeking "cheap
labor" can intentionally hire unauthorized aliens under the guise
of having complied with the employment verification requirements.
* INS has taken steps to improve the employment verification
process, yet considerable obstacles remain. * INS and the
Department of Labor's immigration-related worksite enforcement
efforts have been limited, and INS' employer investigation efforts
have produced modest results. * INS is changing its approach to
worksite enforcement, but it is too early to gauge its success. We
made recommendations in our report that are shown at the end of
this statement. Page 1
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist The Immigration
Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 19861 made it illegal Background
for employers knowingly to hire unauthorized aliens. IRCA
requires employers to comply with an employment verification
process intended to provide them with a means to avoid hiring
unauthorized aliens. The process requires newly hired employees
to present a document or documents that establish their identity
and eligibility to work. Employers are to review the document or
documents that an employee presents and complete an Employment
Eligibility Form, INS Form I-9. On the form, employers are to
certify that they have reviewed the documents and that the
documents appear genuine and relate to the individual. Employers
are expected to judge whether the documents are obviously
fraudulent. IRCA also provides for penalties or sanctions, such as
fines, against employers who do not complete the verification
process or who knowingly hire unauthorized aliens. INS, under its
worksite enforcement program, and to a limited degree, Labor, are
responsible for checking employer compliance with IRCA's
verification requirements. IRCA also prohibits employers with four
or more employees from discriminating against authorized workers.
The Department of Justice's Office of Special Counsel for
Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) and the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission share responsibility for
investigating complaints alleging immigration- related
discrimination. IRCA's employment verification process is easily
thwarted by fraud. Large Fraudulent Documents numbers of
unauthorized aliens have used fraudulent documents to Have
Undermined circumvent the employment verification
process. For example, data from INS' employer sanctions database
showed that, over the 20-month period Effectiveness of INS'
from October 1996 through May 1998, INS identified about 50,000
Employment unauthorized aliens who had used
78,000 fraudulent documents to obtain Verification Process
employment. About 60 percent of the fraudulent documents used
were INS documents; most of the rest were Social Security cards.
Large-scale counterfeiting has made employment eligibility
documents widely available. For example, in November 1998 in Los
Angeles, INS seized nearly 2 million fraudulent documents, such as
counterfeit INS permanent resident cards and Social Security
documents. These documents were headed for distribution points
around the country. In its 1 P.L. 99-603, 8 U.S.C. 1324a et seq.
Page 2
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist 1997 report to
Congress,2 the Commission on Immigration Reform reiterated its
1994 conclusion that the single most important step that could be
taken to reduce unlawful migration was the development of a more
effective system for verifying an employee's authorization to
work. INS has undertaken several initiatives to improve the
employment INS Is Taking Steps to verification process, but it
faces significant obstacles. First, as mandated Improve
Verification in the 1996 Act, INS is testing pilot programs
in which employers electronically verify an employee's eligibility
to work. However, INS has Process, Yet had
difficulty in meeting its goal for enrolling employers in the
pilot Considerable programs. Although INS originally
expected to enroll 16,000 employers by Obstacles Remain
the end of fiscal year 1999, only 2,500 were participating as of
November 1998. According to various officials we spoke with, some
employers are reluctant to participate in the pilots because of
concern that participation may have a negative economic impact on
their businesses. According to these officials, employers in some
industries believe that, in the current tight labor market, they
would not have enough authorized workers applying for jobs if they
participated in a verification pilot. The employers reportedly
fear that they could be put at a competitive disadvantage because
employees rejected by the verification system might go to work for
competitors who are not enrolled in a pilot. Another reason for
low participation in the pilot program could be that some
employers are not aware of the pilots. Other federal and state
agencies, such as Labor and state labor agencies, have contact
with employers who might be interested in INS' pilot programs.
While they did not have a formal role in informing employers about
the pilots and generally did not do so, the Labor and state labor
officials we talked to said they would be willing to inform
employers about the INS pilots. Second, INS has made little
progress in reducing the number of documents that employers can
accept to determine employment eligibility. Having a smaller
number of acceptable documents would make the process more secure
and reduce employer confusion. In February 1998, INS issued
proposed regulations to reduce the number of documents that could
be used from 27 to 14. However, as of February 1999, 27 documents
could still be used, and INS did not know when the proposed
regulations would be finalized. 2 Becoming an American:
Immigration and Immigrant Policy (U.S. Commission on Immigration
Reform, September 1997). Page 3
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist Lastly, INS has begun
issuing new documents with increased security features, which it
hopes will make it easier for employers to verify the documents'
authenticity. However, in addition to these INS documents, aliens
can show employers various other documents that authorize them to
work. Other widely used documents, such as the Social Security
card, do not have the security features of the INS documents.
Therefore, unauthorized aliens seeking employment can circumvent
the improved security features of INS documents by simply
presenting fraudulent non- INS documents-such as counterfeit
Social Security cards-to employers. Since no verification system
is foolproof, enforcing IRCA's employer INS and Labor
sanctions provisions will always be important. INS has devoted a
Enforcement Efforts relatively small percentage of its
enforcement resources to worksite enforcement, about 2 percent a
year since 1994. In fiscal year 1998, INS Have Been Limited
completed about 6,500 employer investigations, which equated to
about 3 percent of the country's estimated number of employers of
unauthorized aliens. To best use its limited worksite enforcement
staff, INS has attempted to target specific industries that
historically have had a high probability of violations. Yet, 43
percent of the investigations INS opened in 1998 were not in the
targeted industries. To bolster its worksite enforcement efforts,
INS in 1992 entered into an agreement with Labor that called for
the agencies to work together in identifying employers suspected
of hiring unauthorized workers. However, Labor has generally
limited its assistance to INS to a review of employers' compliance
with the employment verification paperwork requirements. Labor
believes that delving into immigration-related worksite
enforcement matters, such as the immigration status of workers,
could hamper its own mission of enforcing worker protection laws.
That is, unauthorized workers, fearing possible removal by INS,
could be discouraged from complaining about labor standards
violations. About 70 percent of all Labor investigations are
based upon complaints; Labor initiates only about 30 percent.
Under a new agreement with INS effective November 1998, Labor's
role in this area has been reduced. To avoid discouraging
unauthorized workers from complaining, Labor is no longer to
review employer compliance with the employment verification
procedures in investigations stemming from complaints. Labor is
only to review employer compliance in Labor-initiated
investigations. Page 4
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist A major goal of INS'
worksite program was to investigate employers INS INS Worksite
believed intentionally hired illegal workers, including
prosecuting some Investigation Efforts employers for criminal
violations of immigration law. However, 83 percent of the
investigations INS completed during the period we reviewed
Produced Modest resulted in no employer sanctions. In
fact, INS found nearly half of the Results 9,600
employers INS investigated to be in compliance with the employment
verification procedures. INS initiated criminal proceedings in
only about 2 percent of the investigations. INS officials
attributed these modest results to various factors. They said
that the widespread use of fraudulent documents made it difficult
for INS to prove that an employer knowingly hired an unauthorized
alien. In addition, they said that INS' requirement that its
district offices' worksite programs meet various numerical goals,
such as identifying a certain number of unauthorized aliens, may
have placed an undue focus on arresting unauthorized aliens,
thereby undermining INS' overall goal to target employers
suspected of intentionally hiring unauthorized aliens. For the
closed cases we reviewed, INS collected about $2.5 million in
penalties, about one-half of the $4.9 million employers had been
ordered to pay. INS did not collect the balance for various
reasons, including that the employer went out of business or went
bankrupt. INS is in the process of changing its approach to
worksite enforcement. INS Is Changing Its INS developed a
strategy for enforcing the immigration laws in the interior
Approach to Worksite of the United States with five strategic
priorities. Two of the priorities involve worksite enforcement.
One calls for INS to pursue criminal Enforcement
investigations of employers who are flagrant or grave violators.
However, the strategy does not describe the criteria INS will use
to open investigations on such employers, such as defining a
"flagrant or grave violation." Although INS' previous worksite
program goal was similar, 83 percent of its investigations
resulted in no employer sanctions. Another priority calls for INS
to "block and remove employers' access to unauthorized workers."
The INS official responsible for drafting the strategy told us
that INS plans to build relationships with employers to create an
effective deterrent to illegal immigration. By educating
employers whom INS has found to have unknowingly hired
unauthorized aliens, INS expects that such employers will be
better able to comply with IRCA. This, in turn, would enable INS
to focus its limited worksite enforcement resources on employers
suspected of criminal activities. However, at the time of our
review, INS had not specified how much staff it planned to devote
to the worksite enforcement priorities. Page 5
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist INS faces significant
obstacles to reducing unauthorized alien Conclusions and
employment. Significant numbers of unauthorized aliens can still
obtain Recommendations employment because IRCA's employment
verification process can be easily thwarted by fraud. Employers
who want to hire only authorized workers can be deceived by
unauthorized aliens' use of fraudulent documents. Other employers
who seek "cheap labor" can intentionally hire unauthorized aliens
under the guise of having complied with the employment
verification requirements. Generally, employers of unauthorized
aliens have faced little likelihood that INS would (1) investigate
them, (2) prove that they knowingly hired unauthorized aliens, (3)
collect fines, or (4) criminally prosecute them. Further, Labor's
efforts to identify employers suspected of hiring unauthorized
aliens have been limited and are to be even more limited in the
future. Because enforcement measures can only go so far, we
believe INS is going in the right direction by testing electronic
verification procedures, proposing to reduce the number of
employment eligibility documents, and making INS documents more
tamper-resistant to try to improve the verification process.
However, obstacles such as reluctance on the part of some
employers to participate in electronic verification pilot programs
and lack of knowledge about them, have hampered INS' ability to
improve the process. Electronic verification can be effective
with employers in industries with a history of reliance on
unauthorized aliens only to the extent that they use it.
Therefore, inducing such employers to participate in the
electronic verification pilots is important. INS' new interior
enforcement strategy lacks criteria for opening investigations on
employers suspected of criminal violations. Having clear criteria
is important if INS is to focus its limited staff to achieve its
enforcement goals. Since INS is just beginning its new worksite
enforcement strategy, it is too soon to know how the proposed
changes will be implemented or to assess their impact on the
employment of unauthorized workers. Our report recommended that
the INS Commissioner * as part of the outreach program for INS'
pilot verification programs, seek assistance from federal and
state agencies, such as the Department of Labor and state labor
agencies, in disseminating information to employers about the
programs; and * in implementing the interior enforcement
strategy, clarify the criteria for opening investigations of
employers suspected of criminal activities. Page 6
GAO/T-GGD-99-105 ILLEGAL ALIENS: Significant Obstacles to
Reducing Unauthorized Alien Employment Exist This concludes my
prepared statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased to answer
any questions you or other members of the Subcommittee may have.
Contact and Acknowledgement For further information regarding this
testimony, please contact Richard M. Stana at (202) 512-8777.
Individuals making key contributions to this testimony included
Evi L. Rezmovic, Michael P. Dino, Tom Jessor, and Nancy K.
Kawahara. Page 7
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