Washington, D.C. (March 6, 2023) – A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies highlights a key tool Congress provided to control illegal immigration – employer sanctions. Congress found it necessary to pass employer sanctions legislation because illegal immigrants come to the United States primarily to find jobs; as long as employers hire illegal workers, illegal immigrants will continue to arrive. The law makes available both civil and criminal penalties for employers. The criminal penalties, however, have no impact if they are not used, which they rarely have been.

Almost four decades ago, Congress established employer sanctions with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), making it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire and employ illegal aliens and incorporating civil penalties. IRCA also made employers criminally liable for engaging in a pattern or practice of doing such and potentially liable for the preexisting crime of “harboring” illegal aliens. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act established a separate criminal offense for the knowing hiring of at least 10 illegal aliens known by the employer to have been smuggled into the U.S., and made harboring illegal aliens a predicate offense for the purpose of prosecutions and civil enforcement under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

George Fishman, the Center’s senior legal fellow and author of the report, said, “the Department of Justice is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a pattern and practice of failing to seek criminal penalties for employers who knowingly employ illegal aliens. This must change if the promise of employer sanctions is ever to be realized. Border security alone will not solve the illegal immigration problem.”

The Center’s new report recommends statutory changes that can aid federal prosecutors in meeting their burden of proof to convict the employers of illegal immigrants of criminal violations and help turn off the job magnet.