Advocacy Update
September 2007

Increased Enforcement Won't Fix Broken System
By Matt Wilch, LIRS Senior Counsel for Policy and Advocacy, and Melanie Gibbons, Acting Director for Church and Community Outreach

On August 11, just weeks after Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the Bush administration announced that it will increase border, interior and worksite enforcement. 
 
LIRS’s position on comprehensive immigration reform remains the same: the immigration legal system is broken. Five percent of needed foreign workers in the United States have no way of becoming authorized workers. Millions of workers and their families are forced into the shadows. We cannot enforce our way out of these problems. We need to change the law with real, workable reform that protects and unites families, safeguards human and worker rights, ends marginalization, and provides a path to permanence.

Unfortunately, the White House is taking an enforcement-only approach, expanding detention facilities by 4,000 beds, increasing Border Patrol agents and building 370 miles of fencing on the border. The administration is also expanding ill-conceived interior enforcement measures such as increasing the number of state and local police trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration law. Many local police chiefs across the country have echoed the concern that this local enforcement approach undermines their ability to do their primary job of protecting immigrant communities. Undocumented victims of domestic violence and other crimes are afraid to report to local police lest they hand them over to the Department of Homeland Security.

On the workplace front the administration has said that it now wants to use Social Security Administration (SSA) “no-match” letters as an enforcement tool. This is despite a 2006 SSA estimate that 17.8 million of its records—over 4 percent—have errors. Many fear that this rule will lead to unfair, discriminatory hiring, firing and layoff practices impacting even  naturalized citizens and foreign-born workers with employment authorization. For at least 1.4  million undocumented workers, the adminstration’s plan threatens serious consequences, including loss of employment and further marginalization, arrest, and deportation. Moreover, undocumented people’s families, which often include spouses and children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, are threatened with financial hardship and heartbreaking separation.

The new “no-match” rule could also significantly impact the U.S. economy. Many undocumented workers hold jobs in industries such as agriculture for which there are not enough U.S. workers. Furthermore, a study by Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara found that some 65 percent of undocumented workers report having had federal payroll taxes withheld on false Social Security numbers—tax revenue that will dry up as undocumented workers lose their jobs. A fund that holds tax revenue from persons whose names and Social Security numbers do not match currently contains $586 billion, an increase of $123 billion in just the last five years.

In response to a lawsuit by ACLU and other advocates charging that the new rule will cause unlawful discrimination, District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney issued a temporary injunction against enforcing it until at least October 1, when a full hearing will be held to determine the lawfulness of the new proposal.

Meanwhile, LIRS urges advocates to learn more about these enforcement measures while continuing to call for humane, comprehensive immigration reform. As more workers, families and communities are impacted by loss of employment, arrest and deportation, the human cost of enforcing our broken laws will become evermore apparent.

For more information on the proposed “no match” rule, please contact the LIRS Access to Justice Unit at 410/230-2700 or atj@lirs.org.

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