WASHINGTON — With the failure of immigration legislation in Congress this year, federal officials are planning a new crackdown on illegal immigrants that would force businesses to fire them or face stiff penalties. But the effort also could cause serious headaches for millions of U.S. citizens.
In the coming days, the Department of Homeland Security is expected to issue a rule outlining how businesses must respond when they receive notice that there are discrepancies in a worker's tax records.
Many businesses simply ignore such notices now. Under the new rules, employees would have a limited time to contact the Social Security Administration to correct the information, or face termination.
The rule would transfer more responsibility for enforcement to companies -- part of a Homeland Security effort to break through the complacency that some officials say the corporate world has about illegal workers.
The initiative follows warnings by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his department would toughen enforcement if efforts to overhaul the flawed immigration system failed. The discrepancies detected in Social Security employment records can sometimes flag illegal workers on the job.
However, the planned crackdown has provoked concern because many of the errors are benign: misspellings or incorrect birthdates in records of citizens or legal immigrants. There are errors in the records of an estimated 12.7 million U.S. citizens alone, and workers rushing to correct these discrepancies could swamp Social Security offices, much as new travel regulations have paralyzed government passport facilities this year.
And businesses are complaining about bearing the burden of enforcing a flawed immigration system.
Despite such opposition, the Bush administration is pressing forward. Officials say the new rule will provide clarity for companies that have said they didn't know what to do when the Social Security Administration sent letters indicating inconsistencies in a worker's records. The administration also sees these "no-match" letters as a way to target illegal immigrants and employers of those who make up Social Security numbers or use other people's.
"Last year, out of 250 million wage reports that the SSA received, as many as 10% belonged to employees whose name doesn't match their Social Security records," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke. "That doesn't necessarily indicate a modest clerical error; it's indicative of a broader, widespread problem. The rule fixes that and tells employers there are no more excuses."
