Government to Crack Down on Illegal Immigrants

The New York Times has an article up on its newly de-firewalled website announcing plans by the Department of Homeland Security to require employers to fire employees who use falsified Social Security numbers.

For years employers and the government have largely ignored so-called "no-match letters" notices that Social Security numbers provided by employees do not match entries made into the system. Now employers will have 14 days to remediate errors after receiving a no-match letter from the government. The employer will be expected to check for clerical errors or consult with the employee for any mistakes. If these mistakes are corrected and the proper documents filed within the 14 day period the employer will avoid government penalties.

From the New York Times:

The new rules codify an uneasy partnership between the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces the immigration laws, and the Social Security Administration, which collects identity information from W-2 tax forms of about 250 million workers each year, including immigrants and Americans, so it can credit the earnings in its system.

Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for Social Security, said the agency expected to send out about 140,000 no-match letters to employers this year, covering more than eight million workers. After the rules are announced, the agency is anticipating a surge in requests from employers seeking to clarify workers’ information, he said.

I'm sorry the government waited so long (decades) to announce this crackdown on employers who hire illegal aliens. Families of illegals living in the United States today have come to expect that working in the United States is a right! The reason illegal immigration has ballooned to the level we have today is due to employers who hire them! Many of these employers see undocumented immigrants as a ready source of cheap labor. Since these folks are here illegally they can be easily intimidated. And there are some unscrupulous employers who calculate the amount they would normally withhold in FICA and Medicare payments for the employee and never forward those withholdings to the Federal government.

Employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens are not heroes.

The usual suspects are making noises about challenging this soon-to-be announced ruling in court.

From the article:

Immigrants rights groups and labor unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O, predicted the rules would result in discrimination against Hispanic workers. They said they were preparing legal challenges to try to stop them from taking effect.

I like that "Immigrants rights groups" moniker, should read "illegal immigrants presumed rights groups" who feed off of the misfortune of these folks.

Also from the article:

“The enforcement is only on the immigration side,” Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O, said today. “They don’t do any labor inspection. So they are just giving employers another tool to repress workers’ rights.”

Even large companies that do not hire many low-skilled immigrants would also be affected by the rules, lawyers said. “It’s going to be a big change for almost every company,” said Cynthia J. Lange, an immigration lawyer in California.

“If this is strictly enforced, there could be massive layoffs of workers,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a director of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan research group. But he said that illegal immigrant workers might not leave the labor force, but would apply for jobs at other businesses using the same invalid documents. He predicted the market for forged documents would grow.

Excuse me but I don't think people who have just been fired because of their phony Social Security card are going to be in the market for a new and improved phony Social Security card.

Expect a fight but it had to come down to this one day.