Seattle right-wing talk radio host hired illegal immigrants, now fires 100 of them

[Newsjock]

Source: Seattle Times

A janitorial company owned by a local conservative talk-radio host is among the early targets of a new strategy by the Obama administration to thin the ranks of illegal immigrants by going after the companies that hire them.

Seattle Building Maintenance, owned by KVI talk-radio host Peter Weissbach and his wife, provides janitorial services in buildings throughout the Puget Sound region, including such Seattle landmarks as the Seattle Art Institute, Pacific Place, Metropolitan Park and the Dexter Horton and Westin buildings.

The subject of an ongoing immigration audit by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, the company has been clearing its books by firing some of its janitorial staff — about 100 people so far — believed to be working illegally.

... Immigrant advocates who initially lauded the shift in strategy as more humane are now seeing the impact it has on workers unable to find new jobs in a slow economy, while their employers appear to escape largely unscathed, much as they did under the old policy.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010333876_firedjanitors23m.html

[peacetalksforall]

1. Is this the new strategy? Does the hiring company get off free? What is the end goal of

the new strategy? What is going on? Without knowing more - I DON'T LIKE IT. There has to be someing more humane. More planned. Something negotiated and agreed to? RAIDS? WITH THE MINORITY PEOPLE who are signed up under W-2s and who pay taxes left in the streets? What hypocrits we are.

If the decades old policy of wanting these people for their labor is as established as it is, if they have been paying taxes for decades, if they were welcomed with a wink-wink for all this time, then a reversal in policy must be more planned than this.

I don't get it. What the heck is going on? It makes us first class hypocrites.

[pampango]

2. Article said that E-verify is only for new hires, not existing employees. I didn't know that.

"Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the cases in Minnesota and California suggest that employers are escaping penalty and that the administration's new policy appears to deter neither employers nor the illegal-immigrant workers they hire." "This does nothing to address the millions of people in the country illegally" who have an incentive to remain here as long as possible in the hopes of eventually winning amnesty, Mehlman said. "As long as that's on the table," Mehlman said, "they will stick it out because there's a good chance of being rewarded.""

"In a recent speech, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged that immigration laws now lack teeth in successfully prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegally immigrants and said fines are so low dishonest businesses often ignore them. Reform being planned in Congress should increase the civil and criminal penalties for employers who violate immigration laws as well as extend "earned legal status" to many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, she said."

"In August the firm signed up for E-Verify, a free federal online service that allows employers to compare information provided by new hires against government social security and immigration records. In September, Seattle Building told its union it had received an audit notice. It then began notifying workers whose Social Security numbers did not match their names, giving them about a month to verify their work eligibility or lose their jobs."

"Sergio Salinas, SEIU Local 6's president, said the union has filed grievances against Seattle Building over the firings but admitted there's nothing it can do to stop them. He said unlike other immigration investigations elsewhere, Seattle Building used E-Verify to ferret out those on its payroll who might be illegal — something a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security, which administers the program, call an "inappropriate" use of E-Verify. The system is intended to be used for new hires — not to check existing employees."

Sounds like the Federation for American Immigration Reform pines for a return to the Bush policy of big raids with mass arrests and deportations. Obama seems more interested in enforcing existing law without the splashy PR raids.[/i}