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To this day--18 years after passage of the immigration-reform bill--a nationwide telephone-verification system has yet to be implemented. A small-scale verification project was established in 1992, but it covered only nine employers in five states. In 1996, Congress enacted yet another immigration-reform bill, and it too provided for a telephone-verification program. Called Basic Pilot, it promised to provide employers with an easy way to verify a prospective employee's status. An employer who signed up for the system could call an 800 number and provide the name, Social Security number or the alien ID number of a new hire. The employer would receive either a confirmation that the number and name were valid or an indication that called for further checking.
The system is fatally flawed. Basic Pilot is voluntary. Employers aren't required to sign up. Imagine what compliance with tax laws would be if filing a 1040 were optional.
For all the rhetoric about the perils of illegal immigration, Congress shows no interest in cracking down on employers. When the INS attempted in the past to enforce the law, lawmakers slapped down the agency. In 1998 the INS launched Operation Vanguard, a bold attempt to catch illegals in Nebraska's meat-packing industry. Rather than raid individual plants to round up undocumented workers, as it had done for years, the INS aimed Operation Vanguard at the heart of illicit hiring practices. The agency subpoenaed the employment records of packing houses, then sought to match employee numbers with other data like Social Security numbers.
The INS subpoenaed some 24,000 hiring records and identified 4,700 people with discrepancies at 40 processing plants. It then called for further documentation to verify the workers' status. Nebraska was seen as just the first step. Plans were in the works to launch similar probes in other states where large numbers of illegals were known to be employed in the meat-packing industry. But the INS never got the chance. A huge outcry in Nebraska from meat-packers, Hispanic groups, farmers, community organizations, local politicians and the state's congressional delegation forced the INS to back off.
Not surprisingly, the INS's employer-sanctions program has all but disappeared. Investigations targeting employers of illegal aliens dropped more than 70%, from 7,053 in 1992 to 2,061 in 2002. Arrests on job sites declined from 8,027 in 1992 to 451 in 2002. Perhaps the most dramatic decline: the final orders levying fines for immigration-law violations plunged 99%, from 1,063 in 1992 to 13 in 2002.
As might be expected, employers got the message, albeit one quite different from that spelled out in the 1986 and '96 legislation. Now many corporate managers feel emboldened to place orders for workers while the prospective employees are still in Mexico, then assist them in obtaining phony documentation and transport them hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles from the interior of Mexico to a production line in an American factory.