Groups challenge illegal-immigration proposals
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO this week separately assailed a new White House-backed crackdown on illegal immigration, warning of massive disruptions to the economy and headaches for U.S. citizens if the proposal goes ahead as planned in the coming days.
The Bush administration intends to begin writing to 140,000 employers Tuesday regarding suspect Social Security numbers used by an estimated 8.7 million workers, as a way of pressuring them to fire illegal immigrants. President Bush disclosed the plan three weeks ago as part of a repackaged, 26-point enforcement program after Congress failed to overhaul U.S. immigration laws this summer.
But leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a coalition of trade groups representing the construction, lodging, farming, meatpacking, restaurant, retail and service industries appealed Monday to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to postpone the plan’s implementation for six months.
Raising the possibility of plant closings, autumn-harvest interruptions and other destabilizing consequences for the U.S. economy, 50 business organization members of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition signed a letter warning of “uncertainties, disruptions, and dislocations throughout broad swaths of the workforce,” as well as discrimination against Hispanic and immigrant workers.
Wednesday, the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center and local labor groups separately asked a federal judge in San Francisco to stop the mass mailing and kill the plan outright. They alleged that the DHS is overstepping its authority to enforce immigration laws and is misapplying the Social Security system in a way that will unfairly penalize law-abiding workers and employers.
The groups said that inaccurate federal databases could sweep U.S. citizens and legal residents into a bureaucratic morass. The Social Security database used to cull suspicious numbers contains erroneous records on 17.8 million people, including 12.7 million native-born U.S. citizens, the Social Security Administration’s inspector general reported last year.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the lawsuit “completely without merit, and we intend to fight it vigorously.”
Asked about the business coalition’s request for a six-month reprieve, Knocke said: “The list of signatures tells you why immigration reform has been hard, and why we often face enforcement challenges. Still, we’re going to restore public credibility on enforcement.”