As feds shift strategies in hunt for illegals, few happy with the results
By Julie Forster
jforster@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 02/06/2011 10:28:23 PM CST
Skip Bolton knew if he lost a big portion of his work force, even a temporary shutdown of his company's food-packaging operations in Lakeville could cost his business some clients. Big consumer-products companies use the contract manufacturer to package their cereals and snacks and get them onto shelves — fast.
Not being able to spare a slowdown if federal agents came combing for illegal workers, Ryt-way Industries signed onto a partnership with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to ensure that the company's 1,000 workers — 40 percent of whom don't speak English — are legal.
The program includes using E-verify, a centralized federal database to check whether documents produced by job candidates are legitimate. At first many documents came up as suspect. It happened, said Bolton, who is vice president of human resources, "quite often." It has improved and, as word spread among immigrant communities about the company's careful checking, Bolton says fewer false documents turn up.
Still, he said he would welcome reform of immigration laws so more foreign workers could work within U.S. borders legally.
"If that does happen eventually, I would certainly embrace it," Bolton said. "But right now, the law is the law."
Enforcing the law is a process that remains enmeshed in controversy. In recent years, focus has switched from high-profile workplace raids in which workers were jailed and eventually deported to an emphasis on employers.
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This approach involves penalizing or even prosecuting employers that knowingly hire and retain illegal workers and limiting the deportation of workers mainly to those who are deemed criminals.
The shift has done little to win over anybody. Workers swept up in what are now known as workplace audits — nicknamed "desktop raids," because they focus on company employment records — may not land on buses headed to jail but still end up fired from their jobs. Fewer are deported, but many are forced deeper into the shadow economy to find work that advocates say likely involves cash pay that flies under the taxation radar. Employers can see their operations grind to a halt as they sift through a blizzard of paperwork.
As the focus has shifted, enforcement has increased. Immigration officials conducted 2,200 workplace audits nationally in fiscal year 2010, up from 1,400 the previous year and more than double the 2008 total. The increased audits in 2010 resulted in 240 fines totaling $6.9 million, up from 52 fines totaling about $1 million in 2009. Immigration officials declined to release Minnesota-specific figures.
COMPANIES PROACTIVE
In recent months, audits in Minnesota have included Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants and two South St. Paul meat-processing companies —Twin City Hide and Twin City Tanning — that have resulted in the firing of hundreds of illegal workers.
DeAnne Hilgers, a Minneapolis employment attorney who advises companies, said she expects the scrutiny will continue to escalate.
"What I have seen is a regular and increased motivation by ICE to confirm that more and more employers are complying with their I-9 obligations," she said, referring to the form used to verify eligibility to work in the United States.
Much of her time now involves helping employers who have received notice of an audit get their I-9s in order to show authorities.
"As ICE inspections increase — and I expect they will — we will see more employers taking a proactive approach to this," she said.
Chipotle, with 1,200 employees at 50 outlets in Minnesota, fired hundreds of illegal immigrant workers here starting in December as a result of an audit. The Service Employees International Union Local 26, which has emerged as an advocate for the workers even though they aren't union members, estimates that 700 workers lost their jobs. Although Chipotle disputes that estimate, it hasn't provided its own number.
The Denver-based company, which also faces audits in Virginia and Washington, D.C., said last week that immigration officials have yet to penalize the firm for the problems found here.
While Chipotle says it uses E-verify in three states where it's required, Minnesota is not among them. Over the past five years, the company says it has improved its document-review capabilities and procedures.
"Certainly, this incident has been eye-opening for us and caused us to redouble our efforts to make sure we are doing all we can," co-chief executive Monty Moran said in e-mailed responses to questions.
NO-WIN SITUATION
In Minnesota, Latino workers who had worked at Chipotle for up to 10 years were fired when they failed to produce valid documents of their legal status to work. Many acknowledged they were hired at the company using false documents that they purchased when they came to the United States.
In explaining their situation, some broke into tears at what they said was poor treatment by a company they had been loyal to for many years.
Chipotle isn't happy with the situation, either. Moran said he believes immigration laws are flawed, and companies find themselves in no-win situations.
"What people need to understand is that when an applicant presents documents to an employer that appear upon reasonable inspection to be authentic, employers have to accept those documents, even though they may later prove to be forged, invalid, or not related to that employee," he said in an e-mail.
If employers bring increased scrutiny to any individual worker, they risk running afoul of civil rights laws, he said.
Chipotle does two separate document reviews for each employee it hires.
"Nonetheless," Moran said, "many of these forgeries are extremely difficult to detect."
The result is instability in the work force and the potential loss of well-trained, productive employees.
"At the end of the day, those employees who are removed from one job simply get a job down the street with another employer," Moran said. "What you have is a lot of disruption and instability to business and employees, taxpayer money and other resources spent, and no real change to the situation."
INTO THE UNDERGROUND
Javier Morillo, president of SEIU Local 26, a union representing janitors, window cleaners and security guards with a largely immigrant membership, saw firsthand what happens after an audit and he, too, questions the feds' new direction. In November 2009, New York-based cleaning firm ABM Industries fired 1,200 SEIU-represented janitors in the Twin Cities after an audit.
Subsequently, many of the fired janitors went from $13-an-hour jobs with access to health care to what Morillo describes as an underground economy of unscrupulous employers who pay their employees under the table and off the books.
Still, based on a survey of the affected workers, only 6 percent said they were seriously considering returning to Mexico or other countries of origin.
The union estimates 760 U.S. citizen children were affected by the audit, by having a parent lose a job, and 678 houses were expected to go into foreclosure.
"Most have found jobs," said Greg Nammacher, SEIU Local 26's treasurer. "But not good jobs or consistent jobs."
One woman, Ester, 40, who moved from Morelos, Mexico, for a better life for her son and daughter, bought a house in South Minneapolis on her wages at ABM. Out of fear, she didn't want to use her last name.
Ester started work at the janitorial company in 1998, cleaning office buildings. When she came to Minnesota, she said through an interpreter, her dream was to find a job and work hard so she could move her family forward.
At first, her son and daughter were still in Mexico living with her mother.
Ester was sending money from her job back to them, motivated to improve her position so they, too, would have a better life. Eventually, the two small children joined her in Minnesota.
After she was fired, she could not find a new job and her daughter, who also is undocumented, dropped out of high school in her senior year to support the family.
Brenda, 19, now works full time for a Shakopee manufacturer. Although she is quick to say she did not "drop out" of high school — she prefers to call it a pause — she finds it hard to quit her paying job to return to school and has not yet done so.
Julie Forster can be reached at 651-228-5189.
And how many AMERICANS are looking for work right now? Sick. Absolutely sick and disgusting.
http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_17314025?source=rss
Some of the vile scum on there makes me worry for the future of this country, people want to kick out immigrants but what can we do with these homegrown breeders, most pay £5 a week (from their bennies ie the taxpayer) for their kids 
