Some Firms Dodge Law on Immigration, Study Finds

SAN DIEGO —  Despite the new immigration law, many workers without legal papers are still finding work by using false documents--a practice that some Southern California employers tolerate, if not encourage, according to an ongoing study.

“We haven’t found many employers who are openly defying the law,” said Anna Garcia, a research associate at the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, who is working on the study. “But while employers may be abiding by the letter of the law, they’re not necessarily following the spirit.”

Those employers who appear to be ignoring the law, the researchers said, include construction contractors, landscapers and others who routinely hire undocumented day laborers from street corners and other gathering places in Southern California.

Such employers are apparently attempting to take advantage of a provision of the law that exempts them from the paper-work requirements if they hire workers for three days or less. Many have been hiring workers for a few days, laying them off and then rehiring them or hiring replacement undocumented workers, the researchers found.

‘Possible Jeopardy’

Duke Austin, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, said: “If you’re doing that with the intent of circumventing the law, there could be some possible jeopardy on the part of the employer.”

If authorities prove that employers are deliberately trying to get around the law’s documentation requirements, Austin explained, they could be subject to fines up to $10,000 per worker and jail terms of up to a year.

Since May, center researchers have interviewed about 60 Southern California employers, all in non-agricultural fields such as manufacturing and apparel production and in service-related jobs in restaurants and hotels. Farm employers were not included in the study, as agricultural concerns are essentially exempt from the law’s legal sanctions until Dec. 1. The responses have not yet been broken down quantitatively.

The employers surveyed--all from San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties--were guaranteed anonymity in return for answering detailed questions examining their operations and their compliance with the new law. Researchers expect to interview another 40 employers before publishing the results this year, said Garcia, who agreed to talk about some preliminary findings. The academic investigators are also interviewing undocumented workers.

‘Good Faith Effort’

The landmark 1986 immigration law requires that all employers fill out and maintain forms specifying what documentation has been presented by new workers to prove their legal status in the United States. Government officials have argued that the great majority of employers will abide by the requirements voluntarily--a belief that the study appears to bear out.

The sanctions were needed, immigration authorities and others have long argued, to ensure that the job market would dry up for undocumented immigrants. Although it is too early to judge definitively, the study indicates that it has not quite worked that way, apparently because many workers have resorted to false papers.

Prospective employees present the fraudulent documents, such as forged Social Security cards and various immigration documents, as “proof” to employers, who can then demonstrate to INS inspectors that they have made a “good faith” effort to comply with the new law.

“They (employers) know that it’s hard for the INS to accuse them of knowing that a document was fraudulent, unless it’s blatant” Garcia said. “They’re very aware of the ‘good faith’ defense.”

Many employers, Garcia said, appear to be willing to overlook phony documents. She recalled the case of a major Los Angeles garment maker who recounted how a prospective worker showed him a blatantly false Social Security card.

“He told the guy to go get a better document and he’d hire him the next day,” Garcia said.

U.S. officials have said they are aware of the flourishing market in fraudulent immigration documents, but maintain that the availability of such paper work will not undercut the law.