Employers of Illegal Immigrants Face Little Risk of Penalty

Nearly every day, immigrants newly arrived from Mexico pick up job applications at Car Wash on Sunset.

Owner George Garcia insists that they provide proof, such as Social Security or green cards, that they are authorized to work. What he does not do is pick up the phone to see if the documents are phony.

"I run a business," he said. "Why is it my job to kick people out? It is not my responsibility to figure out who is legal and who is not legal. It's their job to stop them at the border."

Garcia doesn't worry about being fined or arrested by immigration authorities. Even if federal agents did raid his Los Angeles carwash and arrest his undocumented workers, it wouldn't take long to replace them.

"If I lost 20 guys," he said, "within a couple of days I'd have new guys."

The escalating debate over illegal immigration focuses primarily on those who sneak across the border, not on the jobs that lure them here or the people who hire them. When authorities do crack down on employers, it often is to stem terrorism, human smuggling or large-scale criminal operations.

In fact, the owners of hotels, farms, restaurants and retail stores who hire illegal workers -- never widely sanctioned to begin with -- now face a negligible risk of being penalized.

From 1993 to 2003, the number of arrests at work sites nationwide went from 7,630 to 445. The number of fines dropped from 944 in 1993 to 124 in 2003.

About 7 million illegal immigrants worked in the U.S. last year, said the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization.

"I don't think any average restaurant owner or farmer is shaking in their boots," said Carl Shusterman, a Los Angeles immigration attorney who used to work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"We've seen an effective end to work-site enforcement," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "To whatever degree there is enforcement, the only people on the receiving end of it are the illegals, because there are no fines of employers, practically none."

Even when a fine is levied, it often is settled for "cents on the dollar," said Kevin Jeffery, a deputy special agent in charge with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.

The agency still has a work-site enforcement division, said Washington spokesman Manny Van Pelt, but the primary focus has shifted to protecting national security at potential terrorist targets such as airports, power plants and naval shipyards.