The coordinated raids Tuesday on Swift & Co. packing plants in Worthington, Minn. and five other cities around the country highlight the inherent complications of immigration reform.
In each case, large numbers of federal officers led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at the plant early in the morning and cordoned it off. In Worthington, they detained some 230 workers on the morning shift and removed them on buses.
ICE said that the purpose of the raid was to break up an identity-theft scheme but that anyone without legal status would be processed for deportation. Local government officials expressed concern about how the raid would affect community residents and the local economy. Immigration attorneys and activists described how some families were broken up and how some citizens or legal residents had been swept up in the raid.
Even though local government officials and area residents acknowledged that many of the plant’s workers were in the country illegally, Swift & Co. spokespeople stated they had never knowingly hired anyone without proper documentation. They added that they are participating in the ICE’s Basic Pilot Internet-based documentation check program.
The raids made national headlines, but the number of people detained, nearly 1,300 for the six plants, was less than the number often detained at the border on a single night. A recent report noted that of all the people born in Mexico who are now living, nearly 10 percent reside in the United States. That number is growing by some hundreds of thousands per year.
The raids illustrate the Catch-22s in immigration policy. Large differentials in wages between the United States and other countries create large incentives to migrate. Employers in highly competitive industries want to hire workers as cheaply as possible. It is against the law to hire anyone who is not legally entitled to work in this country.
However, the ICE seldom punishes employers. It is difficult to do so since the documents legally allowed to establish a worker’s status are easily forged. The Tuesday raids are an attempt to deter such forgery, but are minuscule compared with the problem.
Moreover, laws ban discrimination on the basis of ethnic names, appearance or language. The majority of those apprehended Tuesday were from Mexico or Central America, but there are also millions of individuals born in those countries who are naturalized U.S. citizens or legal residents. Increased hiring scrutiny based on Hispanic appearance, language or surname inevitably would cause hardship for those with every legal right to work here.
Moreover, legal and illegal immigrants cannot be neatly divided. Many working here illegally have spouses or children who are citizens or legal residents.
A uniform national identification document that incorporated high-tech measures such as finger or retina scans, holograms and so forth might make it easier for employers to screen out those who may not be hired legally, but there always is strong opposition to any mandatory national ID on civil liberties grounds. Moreover, issuing some new ID to the 152 million people in the labor force would be a gargantuan task involving review of the same easily forged documents now acceptable for employment
Birth certificates always have been the responsibility of local government. They come in myriad formats and generally are easy to forge with scanners and modern software. Local and state governments resist turning this function over to the national government. Any tighter system for new births would not affect the work force for decades.
The federal government could implement a broader, more foolproof database to check for duplicate Social Security numbers or other inconsistencies in existing documents. Basic Pilot is a step in that direction, but is far from perfect. Congress is unwilling to appropriate large sums for a more capable system.
Employers like cheap labor. In a competitive sector like meatpacking, if one company increases its vigilance in hiring, it will be disadvantaged compared to competitors that do not. If effective enforcement applied to all plants, the available labor supply would be smaller and wage rates would rise. Profits of packing companies would not be hurt in the long run, but meat prices to consumers would rise.
As long as U.S. employers offer jobs that illegal immigrants can take, many will migrate. Episodic raids like the one in Worthington will make headlines but have little overall effect. Nor will border fences and guest worker programs make much difference.
© 2006 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.