PHOENIX, (Reuters) – The U.S. government will audit hiring records of 1,000 firms in agriculture, healthcare and other areas to determine if they have illegal immigrants working for them, authorities said yesterday.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, said businesses served with audit notices were selected for inspection because they have connections to “public safety and national security.”
The agency declined to identify the businesses because of what it said was the “ongoing, law enforcement-sensitive nature” of the audits.
The agency said they included agriculture, food and healthcare firms as well as contractors serving government facilities.
“We are trying to tell people this isn’t a stunt, it’s not a flash in the pan, we are serious and we are going to continue to audit to make sure people are complying with the law,” ICE assistant secretary John Morton told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“We will help them do that wherever we can, and for those people that don’t want to do it, we will either fine them civilly, or if they are knowingly violating the law … prosecute them,” he added.
Immigration policy is a divisive political issue in the United States where some 12 million illegal immigrants live and work in the shadows and where Hispanics, the largest immigrant group, are an increasingly weighty voting bloc.
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama’s administration broke with the policy of his predecessor George W. Bush that targeted undocumented workers for deportation, and instead implemented a strategy to go after U.S. employers hiring illegal immigrants.
Obama has said he will seek a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws as early as next year. He supports offering citizenship to illegal immigrants in good standing while cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers as well as hardening the porous border with Mexico.
Democratic leaders in Congress said this week they will introduce an immigration bill in December, but analysts said the prospect of it becoming law in 2010 is clouded by an already crowded legislative agenda as well as congressional elections next November.
Since the Obama administration implemented its immigration policy changes on April 30, the federal government has issued intent to fine notices to 142 U.S. firms, a sharp increase from 32 firms fined in full year 2008.
In July, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc reached a $40,000 fine settlement after an inspection revealed the company had employed dozens of unauthorized workers at a doughnut factory in Cincinnati, Ohio.
A federal probe also found that a third of American Apparel’s factory workers in the Los Angeles area had supplied suspect or invalid records and were not authorized to work in the United States.