Monday, June 19, 2006

Going Easy on Folks Who Hire Illegals

You'da thunk 9/11 would have had Washington cracking down on people who make it easy for illegal immigrants to make money. But Washington's been going pretty easy on companies that hire illegal immigrants.

The Washington Post reports the Immigration and Naturalization Service scaled back work-site enforcement by 95% between 1999 and 2003.
Look at how things have changed over the years:

This first chart shows how enforcement has dropped off dramatically in just four years. The numbers for 2003, shown in blue, barely show up in comparison to 1999's numbers.



Number of prosecutions of employers hiring illegals:
1999: 182
2003: 4

Fine notices issued to companies hiring illegals:
1999: 417 companies
2003: 3 companies

The second chart shows how the amount collected in fines has declined just as dramatically over the same time.

Fines collected from companies hiring illegals:
1999: $3,600,000
2003: $ 212,000

1 comment:

Jessica said...

It seems to me that when we talk about terrorists we're talking mosly about Islamic people and mostly from the middle east. And it also seems like when we talk about illegals working in the US we're talking about Mexicans. So I'm not sure the two can easily be linked.

I will say that all of the illegal Mexicans I've worked with provided false social security numbers so that on paper they were legit. It also ment that they paid into Social Security and Medicare even though they will never collect any of it back.

Just some thoughts.