WASHINGTON As the battle over immigration heats up, restaurant association officials are hopeful that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will go through with its decision to rescind the controversial Social Security “no-match” rule despite a last-minute effort by the U.S. Senate to block the move.
Separately, DHS said this week that beginning Sept. 8 all businesses holding federal contracts must confirm their workers' immigration status through the government's E-Verify database system, which could impact on-site feeders and others who operate foodservice outlets in federal buildings, national parks and military bases.
Restaurant association officials cheered the DHS announcement, which said the agency would drop the no-match regulation that requires employers to fire workers who were unable to reconcile discrepancies in their Social Security records. The foodservice industry had opposed the no-match rule since it was introduced in August 2007.
The Senate had passed an amendment to the DHS appropriations bill prohibiting funds in the bill from being used to rescind the no-match rule. However, a National Restaurant Association official said it was unlikely the Senate move would reverse DHS’ decision.
Brendan Flanagan, director of government relations for the NRA in Washington, D.C., said the amendment, which was sponsored by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., only stated that DHS cannot use the appropriation funds to rescind the rule. “It did not block the DHS’s decision,” Flanagan said. “It did nothing to alter it.”
Prior to the Senate vote, Scott Vinson, vice president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants in Washington, had called the administration’s decision to rescind the no-match rule a “huge victory” for the foodservice industry.
Following the vote, however, he expressed frustration, saying: “This doesn’t bode well for immigration reform. It just goes to show that anything even remotely tangential to immigration — and we’re talking about a very poorly thought-out regulation here — is politically radioactive.”
The House had previously passed its own DHS appropriations bill; the two will now have to be reconciled.
The foodservice industry has been fighting the no-match rule since the DHS issued it in 2007. In an effort to help identify the estimated 11 million immigrants who are in this country illegally, the federal government had hoped to use no-match letters that routinely had been mailed out by the Social Security Administration. The letters were sent to companies with 10 or more employees when an audit discovered that an employee's social security number did not match a file in the agency's database.
In 2007 the Bush administration said the government would alter the language of the no-match letters and potentially seek criminal sanctions against employers of illegal immigrants. Under the rule, DHS would be able to threaten employers with fines as high as $10,000 for failure to fire workers who are unable to reconcile Social Security account discrepancies within 90 days.
But before the initiative could be enacted, a labor coalition sued the DHS and SSA, resulting in a U.S. District Court judge's decision to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the SSA from sending out the letters.
Soon afterward, another judge issued a preliminary injunction to extend the barrier against threatening no-match letters indefinitely and directed the DHS to submit a new proposal addressing the court's questions. At the time, the judge observed the no-match letters would cause "irreparable damage to innocent workers."
The DHS made minor alterations but the injunction was not dropped.
In the meantime, the DHS said foodservice operators who hold federal contracts will be required to enroll in the government's E-Verify online program. E-Verify compares information from the Employment Eligibility Verification form, I-9, against government databases to verify workers' employment eligibility. It is a free web-based system operated by DHS and SSA.
Foodservice association officials had found fault with E-Verify, maintaining that the system was flawed and contained inaccurate data. The government "has made improvements over the past year or so in cleaning out databases," Vinson said, "but it still is not quite ready for prime time."
The DHS' announcements come a week after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, launched a new audit initiative by issuing Notices of Inspection to 652 businesses nationwide. The notices warn business owners that ICE will be inspecting their hiring records to determine whether they are complying with employment eligibility verification laws and regulations. It was not known whether any restaurateurs were among those who received notices.
Separately, ICE officials announced a $40,000 fine settlement reached with the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp. for earlier violations of immigration laws. ICE conducted an I-9 inspection of Krispy Kreme in 2007, which revealed the company had employed dozens of illegal aliens at one of their doughnut factories in Cincinnati.
Contact Paul Frumkin at [email protected].