WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted painful economic fallout from the array of immigration enforcement measures the administration unveiled Friday in an attempt to choke off the jobs "magnet" that draws illegal immigrants.
The changes, which would stiffen work-site enforcement, add border agents and increase penalties for rogue employers, could cause havoc in immigrant-dependent industries like agriculture, hospitality and healthcare, Chertoff acknowledged. "There will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this," he said in an interview with The Times.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, August 24, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part Page Metro Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Immigration law: An Aug. 11 Section A article about predicted fallout from immigration enforcement measures said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray was from Solano Beach. The city is Solana Beach, which is where his office is, but he lives in Carlsbad.
Chertoff said he had little sympathy for businesses that hire illegal workers, saying they should have seen the crackdown coming after the Senate failed to pass immigration reform. "We have been crystal clear about what the consequences would be," he said.
The announcement of the multi-agency initiative -- made by Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez -- was the Bush administration's first extensive explanation of how it plans to ramp up the fight against illegal immigration. In a statement, President Bush called the measures "important" and promised "to take every possible step" to strengthen the nation's "broken immigration system."
The enforcement approach is aimed partly at placating conservative Republicans who are angry about the administration's failure to enforce existing immigration laws and the president's support for a plan that would have allowed illegal immigrants to become citizens.
But it also could create a political climate that might lead to the comprehensive changes the administration has sought, including a guest worker program and some accommodation for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Chertoff said the provisions, some of which take effect in 30 days, could push corporate America to apply more pressure on Congress to reconsider broad reforms.
"I'm not a lawmaker, but I presume, at some point, somebody's going to take a look and say, 'We've got to find a way to address this problem,' and that's probably going to require some legal changes," he said. But he stressed that "this is not an effort to punish Congress."
Gutierrez framed the issue more starkly: "We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing each year. The demographics simply are not on our side. Ultimately, Congress will have to pass comprehensive immigration reform."
Business groups, unions, immigrant advocates and religious organizations protested the provisions. But longtime opponents of comprehensive reform greeted the news happily.
"This is exactly what the American people were saying. . . when they said, 'Why don't we start out by enforcing existing laws and prove that Washington will do the right thing?' " said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Solano Beach). "Once we reinstate confidence in the government, then we can come back and talk about the other stuff."
Bilbray compared ending the nation's economic dependency on illegal immigration to weaning an addict off drugs. "If there's some pain, it's not because we didn't have amnesty. It's because we didn't enforce the law 20 years ago when we should have," he said.
Others expressed skepticism about the Department of Homeland Security's ability to enforce the measures, pointing out that the department cannot even come up with the number of high-skilled visa-holders in the country. "The agency that can't count is now going to go on this enforcement gig," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee. "We'll see how they do."
Business groups predicted the effect would be broadly felt.
"It's going to be awful; the harvest is going to be awful," said Laura Foote Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Business Immigration Group, predicting the effect on agriculture, where more than half of the 2.5 million workers are believed to be illegal. "People will feel it when they go grocery shopping, when they read in the newspaper that we're importing our meat from China."
Many of the measures the administration highlighted Friday are already underway, including a dramatic increase in criminal prosecutions of employers with illegal workers. Immigration officials have made 742 such arrests in the first 10 months of this fiscal year.
Some measures are in the early planning stages. A couple are a few months from launching, including a requirement that federal contractors use E-Verify, an electronic system to confirm that their employees are legal.
