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But those penalties are rarely imposed, as Syracuse University’s data shows. By comparison, there were nearly 1,300 cases in which migrants were prosecuted for illegally entering the country and more than 6,000 prosecutions for what the law describes as “bringing in and harboring certain aliens.”
Lesser penalties against employers are also rare. Civil fines may range from $250 to $10,000 per employee; criminal ones can reach $50,000 per employee. But in fiscal 2022, both criminal and civil fines totaled only $23 million, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s annual report to Congress. Annual figures vary widely, but they surely represent a minuscule portion of violations that occur.
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So employers have little fear of paying any price for violating the law. The vast majority of government resources has always gone toward securing the border, rather than enforcing it in the workplace.
Why is that? As the authors of the 1986 act, former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former congressman Romano L. Mazzoli (D-Ky.), wrote in The Post two decades after its enactment: “One answer is that there are never enough federal budget resources. Another is that administrations of both stripes are loathe to disrupt economic activities — i.e. labor supply in factories, farms and businesses. And we know that disruptions in the labor supply are the natural, unavoidable and even desirable consequence of strong border and workplace enforcement.”
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, former chief executive of what was once the country’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. A massive 2008 immigration raid on his family-owned slaughterhouse in Iowa rounded up 389 undocumented immigrants, some as young as 13, who described horrifying working conditions. (Though his conviction was for financial fraud.)
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In its statement, the White House noted that leniency for Rubashkin was “an action encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum,” including Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), then-Democratic leader of the House, and Republican Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), then-president pro tempore of the Senate.
It can be hard for those who do the hiring to discern whether the documents that job applicants provide are valid. Undocumented workers often produce forgeries or papers they borrowed from others. (In 2019, The Post reported that Trump’s own businesses had relied on undocumented labor, an account based on interviews with nearly 50 current and former employees.)
But few employers even avail themselves of the best tool that is available. Of the estimated 6 million employer firms in the country, fewer than 1 in 6 use E-Verify, the government’s free online system through which employers can confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in this country. Congress has refused to make it mandatory.
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Aggressive enforcement could also encourage more migrants to simply go underground, meaning they work off the books and don’t pay taxes or receive insurance. That would “drag down wages and working conditions for everyone,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Still, as long as immigration policy remains so lopsided — penalizing those who come to the country illegally but rarely those who hire them — it is hard to imagine a solution that actually addresses the forces that have created today’s chaos.
It’s worth noting that business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have long sought more comprehensive immigration overhaul, including opening new paths for foreign workers to legally fill the needs of U.S. employers. The chamber also supports mandatory use of E-Verify.
There is a solution to the problem of illegal immigration, but lawmakers must recognize that it can’t begin and end with border walls and razor wire.
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Fewer than a dozen. That’s how many employers were prosecuted in fiscal year 2023 for hiring immigrants who did not have proper documentation, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
That fact gets at a frustrating aspect of our immigration debate: While legislators on both sides are focused on trying to stop the record number of people illegally crossing the U.S. border, almost no one is talking about the economic incentives drawing them here. And the businesses creating those incentives rarely face any consequences if they fail to verify the legal status of their workers.
The last sweeping rewrite of immigration law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, is mostly remembered for the path to citizenship it created for an estimated 3 million people, mostly of Hispanic origin, who for years had been living in the shadows. But its most contentious provision was one that, for the first time, imposed criminal and civil penalties on employers who knowingly hire a worker who is not in the country legally.
Before then, it had been a felony to harbor an undocumented immigrant, but the 1952 “Texas Proviso” stipulated that employing one did not violate the law. The 1986 law set out civil fines for employers who hire undocumented workers and criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for those who show a “pattern or practice” of violations.
But those penalties are rarely imposed, as Syracuse University’s data shows. By comparison, there were nearly 1,300 cases in which migrants were prosecuted for illegally entering the country and more than 6,000 prosecutions for what the law describes as “bringing in and harboring certain aliens.”
Lesser penalties against employers are also rare. Civil fines may range from $250 to $10,000 per employee; criminal ones can reach $50,000 per employee. But in fiscal 2022, both criminal and civil fines totaled only $23 million, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s annual report to Congress. Annual figures vary widely, but they surely represent a minuscule portion of violations that occur.
So employers have little fear of paying any price for violating the law. The vast majority of government resources has always gone toward securing the border, rather than enforcing it in the workplace.
Why is that? As the authors of the 1986 act, former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former congressman Romano L. Mazzoli (D-Ky.), wrote in The Post two decades after its enactment: “One answer is that there are never enough federal budget resources. Another is that administrations of both stripes are loathe to disrupt economic activities — i.e. labor supply in factories, farms and businesses. And we know that disruptions in the labor supply are the natural, unavoidable and even desirable consequence of strong border and workplace enforcement.”
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, former chief executive of what was once the country’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. A massive 2008 immigration raid on his family-owned slaughterhouse in Iowa rounded up 389 undocumented immigrants, some as young as 13, who described horrifying working conditions. (Though his conviction was for financial fraud.)
In its statement, the White House noted that leniency for Rubashkin was “an action encouraged by bipartisan leaders from across the political spectrum,” including Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), then-Democratic leader of the House, and Republican Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), then-president pro tempore of the Senate.
It can be hard for those who do the hiring to discern whether the documents that job applicants provide are valid. Undocumented workers often produce forgeries or papers they borrowed from others. (In 2019, The Post reported that Trump’s own businesses had relied on undocumented labor, an account based on interviews with nearly 50 current and former employees.)
But few employers even avail themselves of the best tool that is available. Of the estimated 6 million employer firms in the country, fewer than 1 in 6 use E-Verify, the government’s free online system through which employers can confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in this country. Congress has refused to make it mandatory.
Aggressive enforcement could also encourage more migrants to simply go underground, meaning they work off the books and don’t pay taxes or receive insurance. That would “drag down wages and working conditions for everyone,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Still, as long as immigration policy remains so lopsided — penalizing those who come to the country illegally but rarely those who hire them — it is hard to imagine a solution that actually addresses the forces that have created today’s chaos.
It’s worth noting that business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have long sought more comprehensive immigration overhaul, including opening new paths for foreign workers to legally fill the needs of U.S. employers. The chamber also supports mandatory use of E-Verify.
There is a solution to the problem of illegal immigration, but lawmakers must recognize that it can’t begin and end with border walls and razor wire.
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