Lax laws spare employers of illegals

WASHINGTON, July 21 (UPI) -- The failure of U.S. immigration officials to arrest many employers of illegal immigrants is due to an insufficient level of laws aimed at them, analysts say.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they have made 937 criminal arrests at U.S. workplaces in the first nine months of this year, with 99 of those arrests company supervisors, The Washington Post reported Monday.

"Why are employers not punished more often? Because the laws we have don't really authorize that," Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department, told a group of immigration policy experts, the Post reported.

Analysts say business interests, labor unions and advocates for immigrants have succeeded in watering down penalties for employers for 20 years.

"If you want law enforcement, you have to have laws that are enforceable," Doris Meissner, former head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told the Post, adding a 1986 measure aimed at punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants "has just been chronically flawed from the time it was passed."