I-9 Audits

An I-9 audit at Cashmere's Crunch Pak facility may result in a significant layoff for employees. Employees need to provide documents proving they can work in the United States legally after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement audit unveiled discrepancies in the payroll. Dan Fazio with Washington Farm Labor Association talks about how ICE goes about doing an audit.

FAZIO: The way I-9 audits happen is the company gets a letter and has to send in all the I-9's and then it's a several month process. It can take anywhere from 2 months to a year for the ICE folks to get back to the companies. Some time in your I-9 process you get a letter from ICE which states that you have 10 days to basically get rid of workers who had presented fraudulent I-9's.

Fazio says that that during that 10 days, employees can correct the wrong information.

FAZIO: Let's say they were illegal when they started working for you but they've become legal, then all they have to do is show the correct documents. Or a married woman has the wrong name on a social security card or something like that. There can be errors in there so you get that 10-day period to correct any errors.

Immigration is a hot topic again on Capitol Hill with many politicians doubting that anything will be done during the remainder of Obama's term in office.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.