Chertoff announces (vague) new system for verification of employee status

Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday (12/1) that employers will be given now tools for verifying the immigration status of their employees.

Actions against employers for hiring undocumented workers have fallen to negligible levels in recent years (Between 1999 and 2004, the number of notices of intent to fine an employer dropped from 417 to fewer than 5, according to a G.A.O. report.)  Inspections of workplaces have also fallen off sharply.  Importantly, Michael Wishnie and others have noted that those inspections that do go forward are often correlated to workers’ efforts to organize in the workplace, which suggests that such inspections do more to serve as a means of retaliation for workers’ efforts to secure their workplace rights than as a neutral tool for immigration enforcement.

It’s not clear how the new identification system, discussed in slightly more detail in this article, will affect this state of affairs.

-jmc