"A recently announced crackdown on undocumented workers will leave the immigrants in a bind without much recourse to make their stay in the United States aboveboard, according to Marilyn Daniels, attorney and director of the Maxwell Street Legal Clinic.
Daniels, who also serves on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Commission on Immigration, said undocumented workers contributing to the Lexington and Kentucky economies can take very little solace, even if they are married to a legal citizen, in the wake of an announcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Under ICE's new plan, employers who receive what is known as a "no match letter" from the Social Security Administration informing them an employee's name and Social Security number as provided on a W-2 form do not match will have 90 days to rectify the discrepancy, fire the employee or face hefty fines of up to $10,000 per employee and possible time in prison. According to numbers from ICE, of the 250 million W-2 forms received each year, approximately 4 percent, or around 10 million, warrant no-match letters.
The undocumented workers and their families face a fate that could be worse than a lost job, according to Daniels. While immigrants married to U.S. citizens are often believed to have some protection against deportation, those who entered the country illegally can be deported regardless of marital status.
"My gravest concern is for the family, because many, many of the undocumented workers are in mixed-status families, and if they lose their jobs, the family loses a wage earner. And if they are deported, the family is separated, and many are married to American citizens," she said. "It will change our social structure; we won't see to what extent until we see the fallout."
Fellow Lexington-Fayette Commission on Immigration member Fayette Commonwealth Attorney Ray Larson sees the matter with different eyes.
"I'm an enforcing-the-law kind of guy," he said. "I'm not going to worry about whether or not they are legal or illegal or anything else, but if they are violating the law, I want them prosecuted — simple as that."
"My position has been consistent throughout, and that is I'm for enforcement of the law. And if there is a violation of a state law, which criminal possession of a forged instrument (a false Social Security card or number) is a felony, I think it ought to be prosecuted," he added.
But Daniels argued that America has built a system around undocumented labor that can't be dismantled by a carte blanche federal decree.
"Our country has closed its eyes and tolerated this system to develop for probably 20 years or more, and now someone is saying we're not going to do that anymore. And they're saying it without any consideration for the complicity of the government in the situation that has developed," she said.
"It's going to change a lot of lives. In the past, no match letters from Social Security were dealt with without risking making serious mistakes, but now people are going to lose their jobs. And depending on how many employers depend on undocumented immigrants, then I think employers are going to have a difficult time getting their work done," Daniels said.
While Larson would like to see local law enforcement going after undocumented workers for being in violation of state and federal law, ICE spokesman Greg Palmore said raids on employers will be carried out by ICE's force of 5,000 agents and officers.
"Our focus is on national security and public safety. Those are our major priorities, but we will also be identifying, through this information, the egregious violators and employers," said Palmore, who works out of ICE's Detroit office. "But if required for a particular work site enforcement action, we can multiply our enforcement capabilities if needed (with use of local law enforcement)."
If an immigrant has a close relative who is a citizen or legal permanent resident to sponsor them, he or she can start the process of shoring up their status in the United States, Daniels said, but it is an arduous process that takes many years at great expense. And even in making a good faith effort to obtain legal status, Daniels said, these immigrants are still left unprotected.
The first two steps in the process that Daniel's Maxwell Street Legal Clinic can provide take six month each to complete while leaving the person open to arrest or deportation.
Undocumented workers, even those married to U.S. citizens, are subject to a "ten year bar," which forbids them from returning to the United States for a decade. The process for waiving that ten year bar and obtaining a green card to allow a spouse to return to the United States typically takes at least two years, Daniels said.
In the meantime, Daniels said, the employers and the economy could suffer.
"If the law would just open up a way they could legalize that person, then I think the needs could be met all the way around, but congress chose not to do that (in a failed immigration bill that would have offered amnesty). Nothing's happening," she said.