News » August 16, 2007

No Match? No Mas!

The Department of Homeland Security is trying to force employers to either fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match. Widespread job loss often results when the government dons its immigration-enforcement blinders

By Mischa Gaus

Marchers at a pro-immigrant rally in Los Angeles last year

On the heels of Congress’ failure to pass an immigration reform bill, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is releasing a get-tough regulation that would force employers to either fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match or risk a fine of up to $10,000. Corporation and labor advocates both fear it could lead to mass layoffs of immigrants.

The regulation had been sitting in the hopper for a year as Congress debated immigration. As In These Times went to press, DHS Spokeswoman Laura Keehner declined to say whether the regulation’s deadlines and restrictions would loosen due to hundreds of comments that business, labor and immigrant-rights groups submitted last year, decrying the rule. Laura Reiff, co-chair of the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, doesn’t expect substantial changes in the final draft. Her group will fight to delay the regulation’s start date and is considering legal challenges.

“It could fuel these document mills that help steal peoples’ identities because the numbers are going to match,” Reiff says. “There’s the potential for major plants closing down, employers losing good employees, employees going into the underground economy—it’s going to be pretty ugly.”

The Social Security Administration (SSA) sent out 138,000 letters to employers last year, advising them that an employee’s records were inconsistent, a situation that could arise from simple typographical error, marriage or purloined documents. In the past, many employers ignored the letters, but now receiving one could make employers liable for up to $10,000 in fines per unauthorized worker—if the company is among the small but rising number that undergoes a government audit.

Widespread job loss often results when the government dons its immigration-enforcement blinders. In 2002, the SSA sent out 1 million notifications of mismatched information, 10 times the number sent out the previous year. Employers responded by firing 100,000 workers listed on the letters, according to an estimate by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).

Monica Guizar, an attorney with NILC, says employers use the no-match letters as excuses to fire senior workers and bring in lower-paid substitutes. Other employers use the no-match letter to get rid of workers who have complained about working conditions, have notified government agencies of violations of labor and safety laws, or are attempting to unionize.

Housekeepers organizing at a Woodfin Suites hotel in Emeryville, Calif., learned this lesson the hard way. “When we asked the hotel to [follow the local living wage ordinance], they began to intimidate us and threatened to turn us over to the immigration authorities,” says Maria Lopez, a former housekeeper. Management didn’t act on the SSA letters until workers began organizing—six months after receiving notification of mismatches, says Sarah Norr, an organizer with the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. She says employers commonly use immigration status as a weapon to attack organizing workers in the hospitality sector.

Employers complain that by forcing them to become arbiters of document authenticity, the regulation deputizes them as border guards at the workplace door, a task made impossible by the unreliability of the methods employers have to verify workers’ documents. In 2002, researchers at Temple University reviewed the government’s voluntary pilot project that gives companies access to DHS and SSA databases to verify employment status. They found that the system rejected one of every five applicants with no discrepancy—including native-born citizens.

Recent reports confirm that significant errors still plague the programs that verify the employment status of new hires. A December 2006 survey conducted by the SSA’s Inspector General estimated that 17.8 million files would produce the wrong result when employers attempted to check. Another 3.3 million foreign-born residents who obtained citizenship but whose Social Security file doesn’t reflect the change would have to visit the agency’s branch offices to resolve the error before DHS’ system would give employers approval to hire them.

Grayci Rodriguez discovered how difficult it can be to clear the air when a no-match letter arrives. A Honduran native with permanent U.S. resident status and legal work authorization, Rodriguez nonetheless was informed by her employer, the North Carolina hog butcher Smithfield Foods, that she would be fired if she didn’t resolve the inconsistency. She made five trips to the office and obtained a letter from local Social Security officials confirming her authorization but was still fired.

Discrimination against job applicants who appear to be foreign rose sharply after the 1986 immigration bill, which legalized 3 million undocumented people but made it illegal for the first time to employ people who lacked work authorization.

In 1990, the General Accounting Office—as it was then known—sent testers (identical applicants with Anglo and Latino surnames) and surveyed employers on their behavior in employing immigrants. Ten percent of employers acknowledged changing their hiring and firing practices in discriminatory ways, such as refusing to hire applicants with foreign-sounding names or accents. DHS Spokeswoman Keehner says she isn’t aware of any specific plans to challenge discrimination by employers as the new regulation rolls out.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  ... the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is releasing a get-tough regulation that would force employers to either fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match or risk a fine of up to $10,000. Corporation and labor advocates both fear it could lead to mass layoffs of immigrants.

  Can we agree that “workers whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match”  are suspicious?  There are several millions of illegal aliens in this country who invent, buy, or steal fake identification and SSNs.  Inventing, buying, or stealing fake identification and SSNs is (1) against the law and (2) easily verifiable.  I somehow doubt that native or naturalized citizens have this problem in significant numbers.

  Now your basic Progressive does not want to follow the law, at least regarding illegal aliens.  But the rule of law, with all its mistakes and inefficiencies, is what distinguishes Western democracies from, for example, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is neither democratic, nor does it belong to the people, nor is it a republic. 

  The Progressives that attempt to subvert the law are quite willing to follow the laws that benefit them, which has created an interesting political situation. 

  The Civil Rights struggle goes back to Republican President Abraham Lincoln, and to the Abolitionists before.  The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was led by Northern Republicans, including Everett Dirksen who was principally responsible for drafting the Civil Rights Bill.  Kennedy and Johnson, over the ferocious opposition of Southern Democrats, joined with the Republicans to pass the Civil Rights legislation. 

  With exceptional political expediency, the Democrats claimed to own the Civil Rights issue, and backed up that claim with $6 trillion of welfare money, that served primarily to destroy the Black family and social structure in the USA.  Now the Black Democratic order is fraying as more Blacks understand that the Democrats have used them, and more Blacks are returning to their Conservative roots in their families and their communities. 

  Meanwhile, the illegal alien Chicano movement is on the rise.  Both the Democrat and the Republican politicians want those Chicano votes to replace Black votes, and the recent “Congress’ failure to pass an immigration reform bill” involved three players: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the people of the United States.

  The Democrats and the Republicans in Congress put together a finely-crafted “Immigration Reform Bill” that pandered to the illegal aliens, pandered to the industries that profit from the illegal aliens, preserved the political status quo for both the Democrats and the Republicans, but ignored the rule of law and the citizens’ sensibilities about illegal aliens and the Constitution of the United States, the basis for the rule of law.

  In the Constitutional contest known as the recent “Immigration Reform Bill”, the citizens won and both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party lost.  It was particularly gratifying to see Trent Lott and Lindsay Graham (Grahamnesty) first express shock that they could not hoodwink the American public, and then furiously back-peddle in an attempt to placate their constituencies that were implacably hostile to massive and willful violations of American law, by the Congress, no less.

  It is not that we lack laws covering this area so that we need a new “Immigration Reform Bill”; illegal aliens have always been illegal, and the Congress passed a law to block the border years ago, and the money is unspent, and the border is unblocked.

  What we now see is the Congress reacting to the will of the citizens, which is as it should be.  The border is being closed.  Fake identification is being terminated.  Illegal aliens are being sent home.

  So, does Gaus have a real point, or is he just engaging in a bit of Progressive recreational bitching?

  Posted by scorp on Aug 16, 2007 at 7:48 PM

  Oh dear scorp. I can tell you exactly what is happening. Your business leaders just love a labour force that has absolutely no civil rights at all. The fact that this one speaks Spanish matters not one whit. Your pathetic attempt to ‘wedge’  the black working class against spanish speaking immigants is obvious and laughable, even from this distance.

  Have you pondered why your southern border, the one with your very own ‘back yard’ is the one that needs guarding against work hungry peasants, and not the one to your north, which sees mainly US citizens fleeing their military obligaioins? Ever wonderd why republicans that have a had a ‘lock’ until recently, on your federal political processes haven’t wanted to ‘patrol’ the border to the South? Ever wondered why politicians from both sidea of what you call a two party system, don’t want to deny business an endless supply of cheap labour?

  
  This situation is one entirely of the US’ own making, and conservatives like you can ‘whistle Dixie’ both literally and metaphorically, if you think any serious politicla player in the US will do anything other than squat to prevent a constant influx of cheap, expendable, and politically powerless labour into every industry that can use them.

  You and people like you will probably be able to mount some campaigns against these people, and you probably will be able to ensure that some of them are beaten up and even killed, unfortunately, but if you want to stop what is happening, you will have to do better than blame what you call ‘liberals’. Your siren calls for a campaign of xenophobia and persecution of landless labourers looking for work and money in the US, the place that holds itself out to be the source of both, will do nothing except legitimise violence against poor people. Politicians who need campaing funds from business (and that means 90% of US politicians) will do little to prevent a constant supply of ‘cheap’ labour, whatever the polticians pretend to say.

  Who cares?

  
  Anti illegal immigrant laws will never work, because the laws of supply and demand are both so strong in relation to this ‘commodity’ that they will withstand any and every attempt to ‘stop’ the unstoppable. I suspect you know this as well as I do, but you are keen to find another group against whom a jihad can be waged to distract everybody from the rot that is the current US political system.

  Posted by Jane Doe on Aug 17, 2007 at 4:40 AM

  “She says employers commonly use immigration status as a weapon to attack organizing workers in the hospitality sector.”

  Como se dice en Español “scab”?

  Once the illegals become strong enough they will form their own union and complain about anyone willing to work for less than they have negotiated as fair pay. Isn’t that why she wants to organize in the first place?

  This whole story will probably come to nothing anyway. How many times have we been promised action to secure the borders already?

  Promises without funding—Foreign controlled ports— Additional Border Patrol staffing—All just smoke and mirrors.

  These people should come in legally, organize and charge what the job is worth. When they nail the first employer to the wall — write that story!

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 18, 2007 at 7:49 PM

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Also featured Extending Tours, Stressing Troops
Creating the 21st Century Library
Scorned on the Bayou

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Mischa Gaus

• Korean Workers get Sirius
  Female factory workers wage three-year strike against satellite radio manufacturer. Posted on December 31, 2008
• The Olympic Hustle
  Chicagoans are already beginning to fear what hosting the 2016 Summer Games might do to their cityPosted on June 25, 2007
• Doing It For Themselves
  The Coalition of Immokalee Workers turns 'corporate social responsibility' from oxymoron into realityPosted on May 14, 2007
• Interrogations Behind Barbed Wire
  Who's to blame for America's new torture techniques? Posted on February 14, 2007
• Starbucks Gets Wobbly
  Embattled baristas at the coffee giant turn to the Industrial Workers of the World for solidarity unionismPosted on October 4, 2006