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Audit uncovers illegal
immigrants
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Canton, Miss., has been awfully quiet
in the past few weeks, thanks largely to the Social Security
Administration, according to Sheriff Toby Trowbridge.
"It's been a ghost town down at the
trailer park," the Madison County sheriff said last week.
The Social Security Administration
notified Peco Foods Inc. that the Social Security numbers of at
least 200 employees were not valid, and the company let the workers
go earlier this month.
Sheriff
Trowbridge threatened to arrest the laid-off workers who lived in
the Westside Trailer Park next to the plant on suspicion of being
illegal immigrants. Since then, however, most of them have
disappeared, he said.
"They are illegal,
and they were going to have to go on to someplace else, whether it's
back to Mexico or just move on," the sheriff said. "We were having
trouble with illegals in the community for a long time before this
came about."
The SSA issued 900,000
similar warnings, or "No Match" letters, to companies nationwide
last year. This was a record for the agency.
But this year, after an outcry from
immigration groups, SSA is cutting to 130,000 the number of such
warnings it will send and dropping threatening language that warned
of fines against companies for providing incorrect numbers.
The letters caused "tens of thousands of
workers to lose their jobs over the last six to eight years,
contributed to a climate of fear and repression in immigrant
communities, and caused employers widespread confusion," according
to the National Immigration Law Center.
SSA spokesman Mark Lassiter said the
reduction in warnings this year is not in response to complaints
from employers and employees. "We are just trying to balance the use
of our resources versus the cost of sending letters out and based on
the volume of corrections," he said.
Mr. Lassiter could not give the number
of corrections employers had provided last year and said only that
"the percentage of corrections was very low."
Since 1937, the SSA has deposited
unclaimed payroll tax money into a special fund, which, according to
the agency's inspector general, grew to $374 billion in 2000.
There are an estimated 8 million illegal
aliens in the country, but there are no figures on how many are
employed, said a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.
Peco's employees in
Mississippi were not questioned about their legal status but were
told to resolve the mismatch with the SSA to keep their jobs, the
company said in a written statement to The Washington Times.
Some employees "immediately ceased
coming to work, while others worked up until the deadline," the
company said. "Apparently, none of the affected employees who were
asked to contact the SSA did, in fact, do so, as none of those
individuals returned ... with any explanation as to why the
discrepancy in the Social Security information existed."
Peco also said that "employees were not
terminated ... for any reason related to their legal status in this
country." Instead, the "sole reason" they were fired "was the
refusal of the employees to carry out the company's instructions to
them that they contact the SSA and present the company with some
explanation as to why there was a discrepancy between the
information maintained in the company's files and the information
maintained by the SSA."
The SSA's
no-match letter issued this year makes clear to employers that no
action can be taken against their employees based solely on the
letter.
"IMPORTANT: This letter does not
imply that you or your employee intentionally gave the government
wrong information about the employee's name or Social Security
number. Nor does it make any statement about an employee's
immigration status," the letter says.
"You should not use this letter to take
any adverse action against an employee ... such as laying off,
suspending, firing, or discriminating against that individual. Doing
so could, in fact, violate state or federal law and subject you to
legal consequences," it says.
Still, the
letter is causing confusion for companies about what action to take,
said Gregory Siskind, an immigration lawyer. "In a lot of cases,
there is a legitimate reason, a potential mismatch on the number,
but employers are generally left scratching their heads," he said.
More than 100 immigrant workers were
fired from an Illinois factory in June because of no-match letters.
The company said forged documents were used by some to obtain their
jobs.
Similar language was contained in
letters issued last year, but that didn't alleviate the fears of
illegal workers at a North Carolina factory, who contacted their
union when asked to provide correct documents within a week. The
union lawyer convinced factory management that it would be sued for
discrimination if it fired workers because of the letter, according
to the Charlotte Observer.
Last year,
the letters were sent to employers even if one employee's number
came back mismatched. This year, companies get letters only if at
least 10 numbers are rejected.
The SSA
has issued the letters to employers since 1994 and does not share
the information with other government agencies. "We don't report, we
don't make any statements" to immigration officials, Mr. Lassiter
said.
A fact sheet issued by the
National Employment Law Project (NELP) also assures workers that the
information won't be shared with immigration officials. Workers are
advised that their employer is not required to take any action if a
correct Social Security number is not provided. NELP tells illegal
workers they have "many of the same rights as citizens and
immigrants with work authorization."
"One of your most basic rights is the
right to remain silent when an employer inquires about your legal
status after you have been hired," the NELP fact sheet said.
The fired workers in Illinois are
planning a boycott and have protested outside the office of their
former employer. Many of the immigrant workers in the North Carolina
factory have since been laid off and are seeking unemployment
benefits.
But in Mississippi, "we've
gone from a serious problem to a ghost town," Sheriff Trowbridge
said.
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