Illegal Aliens: Who Left the Door Open?

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A single statistic attests to this. In 2002 the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued orders levying fines on only 13 employers for hiring illegal aliens, a minuscule portion of the thousands of offenders. Nonenforcement of employer sanctions, which is in keeping with the Federal Government's nonenforcement of immigration laws across the board, has been the equivalent of hanging out a HELP WANTED sign for illegals. Says Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank on immigration issues: "They're telling people, 'If you can run that border, we have a job for you. You can get a driver's license. You can get a job. You'll be able to send money home.' And in that context, you'd be stupid not to try. We say, 'If you run the gauntlet, you're in.' That's the incentive they've created."

For nearly 20 years, it has been a crime to hire illegal aliens. Amid an earlier surge in illegal immigration, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which provided that employers could be fined up to $10,000 for every illegal alien they hired, and repeat offenders could be sent to jail. The act was a response to the widespread belief that employer sanctions were the only way to stem the tide. "We need employer sanctions to reduce the attraction of jobs in the U.S.," an INS spokesman declared as Congress debated the bill. When President Ronald Reagan signed it, he called the sanctions the "keystone" of the law. "It will remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw illegal aliens here," he said. Making it a crime for a company to hire an illegal was seen as such a dramatic step at the time that many worried over the consequences. Phil Gramm, then a Republican Senator from Texas, said the legislation "holds out great peril, peril that employers dealing in good faith could be subject to criminal penalties and in fact go to jail for making a mistake in hiring an illegal alien."

But companies had little to fear. Neither Reagan nor subsequent Presidents or Congresses were eager to enforce the law. The fate of just one provision in the 1986 act is revealing. As part of the enforcement effort, the law called for a pilot program to establish a telephone-verification system that employers could use when hiring workers. It would allow employers to tap into a national data bank to determine the legal status of a job applicant. Only those who had legitimate documentation would be approved. With such a system, employers could no longer use the excuse that they had no way to verify a potential worker's legal status.