The Workforce - Illegal Labor Law Enforcement

The chart above shows the percentage of the estimated total illegal worker population arrested during the years 1994 to 1999. Illegal labor law is minimally enforced. Even in 1997, when arrests reached the highest among the four years shown, there were only 17,552 arrests out of an estimated total illegal working population of nearly 3.5 million.

The lack of illegal labor law enforcement can be attributed to two factors. One is the focus in the past five years on the Border Patrol. In the five years prior to 2000, the number of agents had doubled and probably will continue to increase due to terrorist concerns as of September 11, 2001. This increased funding and manpower has also increased the number of illegal immigrants who are apprehended at the border. As the following table shows, apprehensions of those trying to enter the country illegally have gone up.

Apprehensions of Illegal Aliens by Border Patrol, 1997-1999

Year	Apprehensions
1997	1,536,520
1998	1,679,439
1999	1,714,035

Despite the growing number of people being stopped at the border, between 300,000 and 500,000 illegal immigrants enter each year. There are only 300 full-time Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents nationwide whose responsibility is to enforce the ban on hiring illegal workers. With millions of places of business throughout the United States, and only 300 agents on patrol, once the illegal immigrants are here, there's a good chance that they will never be found by the INS.

Another factor in the low illegal labor law enforcement numbers is opposition by political leaders. In Austin, Texas, for example, where many of Texas's estimated 700,000 illegal workers live and work, the City Council passed a resolution in 1997 forbidding city agencies from asking a person's immigration status. The Austin Police Department also enacted the same policy that year. In 1998, INS raided a farm in Georgia looking for illegal workers. After the raid, Congress sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno criticizing INS for its "lack of regard for farmers" (Krikorian). In recent years, the INS has switched from raids to audits. The INS makes an appointment with a business to audit employees' work documents. Advance warning will tend to clear the decks, one presumes. Yet this technique has caused opposition from the Social Security Administration. It refused to give INS access to its records because of privacy concerns.

In 2000, Robert Bach, then a top INS official, admitted that the illegal labor laws were not being enforced. With political opposition to its efforts and inadequate manpower and funding, the INS has since been focusing its attention on finding illegal aliens who have committed crimes. As a result, the number of criminal aliens who have been deported has risen from 51,000 in 1997 to 69,000 in 1999.

Sources: Krikorian, Mark, "Controlling Illegal Immigration: There are Ways, But Little Will", Investor's Business Daily, March 21, 2001. Retrieved December 4, 2001 from http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/msk03-21-01.html. Steven A. Camarota. "Census Bureau: Eight Million Illegal Aliens in 2000." Center for Immigration Studies, October 24, 2001. Retrieved December 4, 2001 from http://ww.cis.org/articles/2001/census-release1001.html. Office of Policy and Planning. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Robert Warren. "Annual Estimate of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States and Components of Change 1987 to 1997," September 2000. David Harmon, "Illegal labor fuels hot Austin economy", Austin American-Statesman, December 5, 1999. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. 1997-1999 Editions. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, annual.