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NORTH COUNTY -- New rules requiring employers to fire workers who use false Social Security numbers drew cheers Wednesday from some politicians and criticism from California's immigrant rights groups, which say the regulations would lead to discrimination and wrongful termination of employees.
A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said the rules, which are designed to clamp down on the hiring of illegal immigrants, will be officially released within days. The proposed rules were announced last year, opening a public comment period that closed last August.
Under current rules, employers are required to send information about new employees to the Social Security Administration. The agency notifies the employer via a "no-match" letter when the information provided does not match with the information in federal databases.
Those letters were rarely backed by enforcement efforts. But that's about to change, officials said.
"These new rules will give employers guidelines on what to do if and when they get a no-match letter from the Social Security Administration," said Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman with the Department of Homeland Security. "There will be no more excuses for those who flagrantly disregard the law."
Supporters of the proposed new rules, including North County Congressman Brian Bilbray, say they are long overdue.
"I think this is what the American people have been waiting for," Bilbray said. He is chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, a group of congressional representatives who favor stricter immigration enforcement legislation.
However, critics said the new rules could lead to problems for both employers and employees. And Southern California growers say the regulations could cripple their work force.
Monica Guizar, an employment policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights group based in Los Angeles, said there are many reasons why the information may not match, including change of names for married women, clerical errors, and outdated and wrong information in the database.
"The impact of this rule is going to be for all workers, regardless of immigration status," Guizar said.
The National Immigration Law Center, as part of a coalition of workers rights organizations, submitted a letter to the Department of Homeland Security last year opposing the changes.
"Such a rule will magnify the adverse impact that no-match letters have had on workers' rights and trigger massive, potentially unlawful firings of low-wage workers across the nation," according to the letter dated Aug. 14, 2006. "Overly cautious employers will fire listed workers before workers have a chance to show they are on the list mistakenly."
The rule change comes after efforts to revamp the nation's immigration system failed earlier this year. Immigration officials have said they were waiting to see the outcome of legislative efforts in Congress before releasing the regulation changes.
Keehner would not disclose details about the changes, but said the agency took comments from the public into account.
The new regulations are expected to give employers time to fix the discrepancies. If the employees cannot correct the information, employers would be required to fire them or risk fines of up to $10,000 for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
Officials with the Social Security Administration on Wednesday deferred questions about the proposed rules to the Department of Homeland Security.
Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for Social Security, told The New York Times that the agency expected to send out about 140,000 no-match letters to employers this year, covering more than 8 million workers. After the rules are announced, the agency is anticipating a surge in requests from employers seeking to clarify workers' information, Hinkle said.
Under current rules, employers can voluntarily submit a person's name, birth date and other data on a Web site. The information is then run through databases maintained by the Social Security Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The system either confirms an employee's work eligibility or issues a "tentative nonconfirmation" when employers enter a Social Security or visa number along with other identifiers such as birth date. In the event of a nonconfirmation, employers must notify workers, who then have 10 days to contest it. During that time, employers are prohibited from firing, suspending or docking pay.
Thomas Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, a group that represents the agriculture industry, said farmers are concerned about the new regulations and may sue to try to block their enforcement.
More than 70 percent of farmworkers in the fields of the United States are illegal immigrants, according to estimates by growers' associations.
"It really makes no sense to tell an industry, 'You have a problem,' when that industry has told you, 'We don't have enough legal workers,' " Nassif said. "That doesn't solve the problem."
A 2004 report by the federal government found that erroneous nonconfirmations for foreign-born workers were "unacceptably high," and "higher than desirable" for U.S.-born workers.
The errors, it found, were largely because of data-entry mistakes and accuracy problems with either the Social Security or immigration databases.
Keehner, the Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the system has been vastly improved.
Supporters of the proposed new rules say they are long overdue and that the problems with the databases should not hold back employment verification efforts.
"You do not allow the imperfect to be the enemy of the very, very, very good," said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington immigration think tank that favors more stringent immigration controls.
The New York Times News Service and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
-- Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.
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