The Illusion of Workplace Enforcement

This year saw the Bush administration make many statements about aggressive workplace enforcement of the immigration laws, along with much-publicized raids in New Bedford, Mass. and other cities across the country.  As we on this blog have stated repeatedly, even after the largest of the raids, roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants remain in the United States.  The Washington Post today reports that "[i]n its announced clampdown on companies that hire illegal workers, the federal government has arrested nearly four times as many people in the past year as it did two years ago, but only a tiny fraction of those arrests involved criminal charges against those who hired the workers, according to a year-end tally prepared by the Department of Homeland Security. Fewer than 100 owners, supervisors or hiring officials were arrested in fiscal 2007, compared with nearly 4,900 arrests that involved illegal workers, providers of fake documents and others, the figures show. Immigration experts say the data illustrate the Bush administration's limited success at delivering on its rhetoric about stopping illegal hiring by corporate employers."  Click here for the data.

KJ