Illegal Hiring Crackdown is Blocked

LOS ANGELES (By Anna Gorman, LATimes) October 10, 2007 — In a major defeat for the Bush administration, a federal judge ruled today that the government could not use mismatched Social Security data to ferret out illegal immigrants from the workplace.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Department of Homeland Security from starting a controversial program to punish companies based on discrepancies between their workers' names and Social Security numbers.

"Altering the status quo would subject employers to greater compliance costs and employees to an increased risk of termination," Breyer wrote in his 22-page ruling.

The injunction will remain in place until Breyer holds further hearings and decides whether to strike down the proposed Homeland Security rule permanently.

The Social Security Administration had planned to begin sending out "no-match" letters in September, and the Department of Homeland Security had warned companies that they could face criminal or civil sanctions if they did not clear up the discrepancies within 90 days. The administration planned to send about 140,000 letters, affecting more than 8 million workers.

Labor and immigrant rights groups, who sued the government to stop the crackdown, called the decision a major victory. They had argued that the new policy was unlawful and that U.S. citizens and documented workers would be fired as a result of the proposed rule.

"This is a particularly important day for the labor movement because the Social Security no-match letters have long been used to defeat worker organizing," said Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.

Business groups had also opposed the planned crackdown, and said today that they were pleased by the ruling.

"It's a signal to the government that they can't do anything they want simply by calling it enforcement," said Randel Johnson, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Johnson said Congress needed to pass some sort of legalization program.

"Let's get beyond this mess we're in ... and bring them into the legitimate workforce," he said.

The ruling comes about a week after Breyer held a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. A lawyer for the government argued that the proposed rule was necessary to "clear up confusion" for employers who did not know what to do when they received a Social Security no-match letter.