The high cost of hiring illegals

Houston Chronicle:

A record-setting, nearly $21 million settlement that allowed a Houston-based pallet company to avoid criminal prosecution for hiring illegal workers should send a clear message to employers tempted to break immigration laws, federal officials said.

Prosecutors who handled the case against IFCO Systems North America said it "severely punishes" the nation's largest pallet manufacturing company, which was caught with more than 1,100 illegal immigrants on its payroll in spring 2006.

The settlement agreement announced Friday should send a "powerful message that ICE will investigate and bring to justice companies which hire illegal workers," said John P. Torres, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

The agreement between ICE and IFCO easily eclipsed the next-largest settlement on record for a company accused of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In 2005, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., paid $11 million to avoid prosecution for employing undocumented workers.

ICE has grown increasingly aggressive in pursuing proceeds from businesses that benefit from illegal labor, collecting more than $60 million in workplace-related criminal fines and forfeitures in the last two years, including IFCO's settlement. In 2003, the agency collected $37,500 in workplace fines and seizures, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

ICE's strategy of hitting employers in the pocketbook appears to be working, said Don Kerwin, vice president for programs for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Businesses pay attention to the bottom line, he said.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., called the size of the IFCO settlement significant.

"It's clearly not something they can just write off as the cost of business," said Krikorian, whose organization promotes stricter immigration controls. "It's likely to prompt them to re-engineer their labor practices so they're less likely to hire illegal (immigrants). And that's the goal."

In fiscal year 2007, ICE secured fines and forfeitures of more than $30 million in worksite enforcement cases. ICE also arrested 863 people in criminal cases and made more than 4,000 administrative arrests during that timeframe — a tenfold increase over a span of five years.

More than 87,000 companies have signed up for the federal government's electronic employment verification system, known as "E-Verify." According to immigration officials, the number of employers registered in the program is growing by more than 1,000 per week.

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Bringing the rule of law to immigration enforcement is a good thing, that should encourage companies to be careful of who they hire and encourage those who immigrate here to do so legally. The fine can help pay for the enforcement efforts too.