The employment of unauthorized workers has been illegal since 1986. Generally, it is unlawful for a Georgia business to hire, recruit, or refer for a fee an employee who is known to be unauthorized for employment. Government enforcement of immigration laws has shifted in recent years to focus on auditing and fining businesses. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agencies recently unveiled a new enforcement program that targets over 1000 employers throughout the U.S. ICE officials have indicated they will seek enforcement including onsite document inspections of businesses of all sizes in all industries. The broad scope of the current enforcement efforts means that any Georgia business is potentially subject to an ICE audit.
The recent announcement is a continuation of immigration enforcement patterns that focus on sanctioning employers, including Georgia employers, rather than undocumented workers. ICE targeted over 2,300 businesses with investigations between July 2009 and September 2010. Federal law mandates that employers examine sufficient documentation to establish a potential new employee’s employment eligibility. The tool to examine documents and employment authorization is the I-9 form. The U.S. government released these statistics on I-9 audits for the current 2011 fiscal year in mid June:
- Ice has launched 2,338 employer I-9 audits as opposed to 2,196 audits for the entire 2010 fiscal year
- The initiation of 157 criminal arrests of businesses allegedly hiring undocumented workers
- The government as assessed over $7.1 million in fines
- Providing an erroneous issuing authority
- Accepting expired documents
- Relying on photocopies or fax copies rather than originals
- Not providing the I-9 documentation in the appropriate column
- Listing too much documentation
- Using red ink
- Application of white out to correct an error
- Any extraneous marks anywhere on the form