Breaking news: Feds target Vermont dairy farms for illegal foreign workers
Posted on November 19, 2009 | By
ADDISON COUNTY — Dozens of Vermont dairy farmers found themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thursday when the department rolled out its largest ever audit of employers in a crackdown on businesses shirking employment laws.
The Vermont Department of Agriculture on Thursday said ICE had targeted at least 86 farms for inspection, and Dairy Farmers Working Together reported between 86 and 100 farms were being issued subpoenas for employment records.
Addison County dairy farms employ as many as 500 foreign-born laborers — most from Mexico. Many Mexican dairy laborers have been prosecuted for entering the country without proper documentation or for overstaying their visas.
ICE is requiring businesses to turn over payroll records and I-9 forms within four days. The I-9 requires employers to review and record each a worker’s identity and work eligibility documents.
The roughly 86 Vermont subpoenas were part of a 1,000-business sweep nationwide. According to ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton, the audit — which is the largest I-9 audit in the country’s history — targeted businesses in the country’s “critical infrastructure.”
“By that I mean sectors of business that are particularly important to our way of life,” said Morton during a Thursday afternoon teleconference. Such sectors included food and agriculture, as well as energy facilities, nuclear plants, water treatment, and emergency services.
Morton said the audit was meant to “even the playing field for employers that play by the rules,” and illustrated ICE’s commitment both to enforcing federal employment law and protecting work opportunities for legal residents.
He also said that every business served an audit during the sweep was selected because investigative leads indicated employers may have broken employment laws.
The audits also indicate the department’s shift in attention from employee raids to focusing on employers.
“If we find that you are knowingly violating the law, we’re going to investigate you and we’re going to prosecute you if we can,” Morton said.
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Comments
I9 Audits
November 19, 2009 by John1972 (not verified), 40 weeks 6 days ago
Comment id: 1904
I own a small business in Vermont and I heard about the first round of ICE I9 audits in the summer. I hired an outside I9 vendor to review my I9 records to see if I had any errors. The vendor did a comprehensive manual audit of my I9 employee documents. They found a few errors and told me how to legally fix them. I would recommend this company to other Vermont businesses who are worried about being audited. The name of the company is Legal Employer.
John
Federal I-9 audits mean Americans get jobs
November 21, 2009 by MadMommy (not verified), 40 weeks 4 days ago
Comment id: 1908
Every job in this country must be filled by legal workers. Every paycheck doled out will help support an American family. Illegal immigrants are not permitted to work in this country. When businesses employ them, they are breaking the law. Why is that message so hard for employers to understand? If they want to have a business that complies with Federal laws, they must hire only LEGAL workers. Breaking the law will get them fined or closed, it's that simple.
The damage has been done by years of allowing businesses to break employment laws and get away with it. By law, employers must provide a level of safety and cleanliness to the workplace. They must pay minimum wages & benefits to workers. They must conform to numerous codes of conduct and procedure. They must pay quarterly taxes and provide certain employment paperwork to the IRS. They often don't abide by the rules and are rarely caught or prosecuted.
If employment law was enforced fairly across the board, businesses could compete fairly and employ people with living wages. As it is now, businesses that break the law have an unfair advantage because they get away with it and therefore make more profit by exploiting workers, skirting regulations, failing to comply to safety standards and never suffering any consequences for their bad behavior. That is unfair and must stop.
I-9 concerns
November 21, 2009 by MichaelJ (not verified), 40 weeks 4 days ago
Comment id: 1909
These recent Notices of Inspection from the DHS are concerning to me, as I am not sure that my company's hiring records are in good shape. I am ion charge of hiring now in my HR dept., but I am only on the job a few months. My predecessor managed the previous new hires and I am not sure he followed federal guidelines in terms of I-9 compliance. I am worried that the company may be in trouble if we were audited. I can really use the help of an outside company to help me see if my records are in line. A previous blogger mentioned Legal Employer. Can you tell me more about that company? How do I contact them?
Support of Farmers
November 24, 2009 by Guest (not verified), 40 weeks 1 day ago
Comment id: 1924
Come on now...farmers are already scraping the bottom and needing government subsidies just to pay the bills! And don't you think that farmers would love to hire good USA workers??? The reason is obvious to me and should be to everyone else. The problem is that Vermont doesn't have enough good workers willing to work for what the farmers can afford. Get out a calculator and do the math. Hiring Vermonters is more expensive and if the farmers cannot afford it then either be willing to pay more in subsidies and/or in milk prices or stop interfering with their way to make ends meet.
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