Obama Administration's Immigration Approach with Napolitano will Point to Employers
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President Obama made it clear that his immigration plan was to “bring people out of the shadows, improve our immigration system, create secure borders, remove incentives to enter illegally and honor our immigrant troops.” However, the Obama administration has not provided any details as to how it is going to accomplish this plan. This has not only created a good amount of speculation, but also a good deal of frustration among U.S. employers. Yet, in spite of lacking details, the Obama has sent out “immigration signals” and employers should be prepared to feel the effects.
The most important of these immigration signals was Secretary Napolitano’s appointment as head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The appointment reveals some of the most basic immigration strategies of the administration’s plan. This is not only part of a well calculated move, but the foundational step necessary to set President Obama’s immigration plan in motion.
Secretary Napolitano is considered a smart and demanding attorney with an intense work habit and a quick grasp for bureaucratic detail. A twice elected Governor of Arizona and a former Attorney General and U.S. attorney, she is not only a pragmatist who signed the toughest state immigration law in the nation, but also a politician with strong enforcement views. She is one of the most experienced state executives in the nation with immigration and one of the very few qualified to handle a massive immigration reform loaded with compliance and enforcement requirements.
She has repeatedly called for a “technology-driven border control” and the penalizing of employers hiring undocumented workers.
Secretary Napolitano indicated that her approach, in terms of immigration raids, will be to closely 
watch the design of the operations and that the focus will be on “unscrupulous employers” rather than on undocumented workers. She also stated that raids will continue where undocumented workers are present and that she expects to increase the focus on ensuring that employers “of unlawful workers are prosecuted for their violations.” Moreover, Napolitano pledged to increase the focus on criminal punishment for employer violators and to encourage them to work with federal immigration agents to “establish sound compliance programs that prevent unlawful hiring.” She also aims to continue boosting manpower on the borders and focusing on technology, such as ground sensors. At the same time, it is her full intention to enforce these methods in a fair manner across borders, ensuring that the law is applied.
This represents a 180 degree shift from the Bush administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, which sought to penalize undocumented workers, rather than prosecuting employers under the theory that actual convictions were hard to get.
In short, immigration reform, whether in piece-meal or in one whole swap, will be enacted in 2009 or 2010. Employers will continue to be raided, but enforcement actions are likely to conform to those prescribed under immigration law rather than the “hyper-criminalized” actions conducted under the Bush administration with their inefficiencies and social negative effects.
Under Secretary Napolitano, DHS, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and possibly in association with other governmental agencies (i.e. IRS, USDOL, SSA, etc.), the number of government audits and the so called “inspections” will escalate. Technology based programs such as E-verify will rule and could become mandatory for every employer in the U.S. Wise employers will be served well by putting their immigration compliance (i.e. I-9, public access and audit files, etc.) houses in order.
The president of a Massachusetts military goods manufacturing company will pay a fine and serve up to 18 months in prison to settle charges stemming from a raid by federal immigration officials in March of 2007. The company will also have to pay a fine of $1.5 million. Under the terms of a plea agreement entered Nov. 3. MBI and its president and principal shareholder, pleaded guilty to several charges in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts alleging that they hired illegal aliens, helped to shield them from detection, failed to pay them full overtime, and fraudulently misled the government. The company specialized in the manufacture of handbags and leather goods. Between 2001 and 2006, MBI won a number of Department of Defense contracts worth approximately $230 million. As a result of these defense contracts, the federal government said, MBI increased its workforce from approximately 85 employees in 2001 to approximately 650 people in 2006. 
to 2007; fraudulently misrepresenting Social Security numbers and committing mail fraud when it submitted Social Security numbers to the IRS and Social Security Administration knowing that many of the numbers had to be false given that many of the company's employees were illegal aliens; and failing to pay many employees overtime from 2005 to 2007. MBI's president pleaded guilty to helping harbor and conceal illegal aliens by allowing the company to submit false Social Security numbers for employees to the government as if they were real. 