Quote of note:

Indeed, the lack of vigorous enforcement against employers who hire illegal workers has been widely viewed as the main reason that 850,000 immigrants cross the border illegally each year. Facing little in the way of penalties, employers feel few qualms about hiring them for meatpacking, construction, agriculture and janitorial work.

...The 1986 act set fines up to $11,000 for hiring illegal workers. But the employer penalties had a fatal weakness: employers could be fined only if the government found that they knowingly hired someone illegally. To elude penalties, employers need only assert a good-faith belief that the work documents immigrants showed them were legitimate. Employers often insisted that they could not tell whether the papers were false.

"Employer sanctions can be a very efficient tool if enforced," said George Borjas, an economics professor at Harvard University. "The problem is the way the law reads, it's basically a joke. It basically gives employers a huge loophole to walk through."

Going After Migrants, but Not Employers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

AS they fanned into the Vidalia onion fields of Georgia, the 45 federal agents were doing exactly what they thought they were supposed to do. It was 1998, and they had just arrested 21 illegal immigrant farm workers and were about to round up hundreds more.

But the raid met with a stinging rebuke from what might have seemed a surprising source: two powerful Republicans from Georgia's Congressional delegation.

Saxby Chambliss, then a representative and now a senator, accused immigration officials of using "bullying tactics," while Senator Paul Coverdell denounced "a moonshine raid" against "honest farmers who are simply trying to get their products from the field to the marketplace." The Immigration and Naturalization Service backed down, granting temporary amnesty to illegal onion pickers in 19 Georgia counties.

Today, Mr. Chambliss, as the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is leading efforts to pass tougher measures than many of his Senate colleagues favor to rein in illegal immigration. \

So why did he fight a crackdown in his own backyard? Asserting that he has always supported enforcement against employers, Mr. Chambliss said he protested the 1998 raid because he considered it too heavy-handed, with agents wearing camouflage and waving .357's. Moreover, he said, arresting immigrants in a few onion fields would result in other immigrants replacing them and would do nothing to deter the flow.

"Going into one field or plant and arresting 30 or 40 people is not a solution to the problem," Mr. Chambliss said.

But Doris Meissner, who was immigration commissioner under President Bill Clinton, had a different explanation: members of Congress, particularly Republicans, do not want to antagonize business.

"There was hypocrisy," Ms. Meissner said. "On one hand, you say you want enforcement, and then you see it's not so easy to live with the consequences in your own district."

Indeed, the lack of vigorous enforcement against employers who hire illegal workers has been widely viewed as the main reason that 850,000 immigrants cross the border illegally each year. Facing little in the way of penalties, employers feel few qualms about hiring them for meatpacking, construction, agriculture and janitorial work.