THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701260099
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ACCOMAC LENGTH: 75 lines
Two Eastern Shore poultry plants and the Virginia Beach public school system are plugged into a computerized database that will help them identify illegal workers.
They join more than 1,000 employers nationwide in a pilot program run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. With a personal computer, a modem and software provided by INS, businesses can check the documents of immigrant employees to see if they're authentic.
``Green cards can be very easily counterfeited,'' said INS spokeswoman Elaine Komis. So can any of the 29 types of documents that immigrants can use to establish employment eligibility, she said.
Employers face fines of up to $2,000 per person if caught with illegal workers. And business can grind to a halt if the INS catches and deports a significant part of an employer's workforce - which has happened.
A cheap, reliable system for checking employment documents could help Eastern Shore farmers avoid these problems. They hire from 5,000 to 7,000 migrant workers each harvest. But there was no record of local farmers participating in the progam.
``It's voluntary,'' said Komis. ``They need to see the need and volunteer for the program.''
Fruit growers in western Virginia have complained that they may lose a big part of their labor pool if they check immigration documents too closely. But chicken processors don't want to risk trouble with the INS.
``Most major poultry companies have been part of the pilot since the beginning,'' said Dick Auletta, spokesman for Perdue Farms. The Perdue plant in Accomac employs 1,750. In Temperanceville, Tyson Foods Inc. employs 1,000 at its chicken processing plant. They form a mainstay of the local economy.
Officials estimate that about 400 of those jobs are now held by Hispanic workers who have left the ``migrant stream'' to work year-round in the poultry plants.
``We've seen a significant increase this year,'' said Jack Bonniwell, manager of the Virginia Employment Commission's local office. ``We're seeing a lot of husbands and wives both working.''
Pat McGee, assistant superintendent for human resources, said the Virginia Beach school system participates because ``it's no cost to us.'' She said she wasn't sure how many of the system's 13,000 employees are immigrants.
McGee said the check doesn't take extra time and the software is free. Besides, the school system already does criminal background checks. ``This is just one more protection to make sure we're bringing in the right people,'' she said.
This is how the Employment Verification system works:
First, the non-citizen must be hired. Pre-screening an applicant is prohibited as discriminatory.
``It's an interesting curve ball,'' said Perdue's Auletta.
The employer takes information from Form I-9 - a document all workers file - and sends it by modem to the INS. That information is checked against the Alien Status Verification Index, a data base with 50 million immigration records that is maintained for the INS by Lockheed Martin Information Systems.
Within seconds, the employer gets one of two responses from the INS - ``employment authorized'' or ``institute secondary verification.'' Nothing else.
``Privacy of the individual is of the utmost importance,'' said Komis. ``An employer can't get a list of immigrants and their status.''
If secondary verification is required, an employer would send the INS more information taken from the I-9.
``He doesn't have to bother the employee any more for information,'' said Komis.
This check takes about three days. During this time, the worker remains on the job.
If an immigrant's right to work still cannot be verified, he has 30 days to contact the INS and resolve the problem. Failing resolution, he's fired - but not deported.
``The responsibility of the employer is to terminate them, not to turn them over to the INS,'' said Auletta.
At this point, the Employment Verification Pilot is one of several being tested by the INS. And there's no provision in the program for enforcing labor laws.