08/22/07 Lots of questions about new immigrant labor rules

Washington Ag August 22, 2007 Dan Fazio, who handles labor issues for the Washington State Farm Bureau, began getting lots of phone calls from employers after the Bush Administration announced new enforcement rules for immigrant labor. Fazio: "Well they want to know exactly what they have to do. What their liability is. They want to know what the fines are going to be. What kind of raids there are going to be. What kind of crackdowns there are going to be. They want to know exactly what their obligation is. In the past your obligation as an employer was to accept the document that was supplied to you, record the numbers and if the document appeared genuine on its face you had to accept it. Now they want to know are they supposed to be document experts? Are they supposed to be scrutinizing the documents? What do they need to do? And of course they are also concerned about if they don't hire a person are they going to be subject to a discrimination lawsuit." Although the new rules take effect September 14th Fazio says the so-called "no-match" letters from the Social Security Administration probably won't start going out until October and employers will have 90 days to conduct investigations of employees with questionable documentation. The Farm Bureau is planning a full-day labor conference on these issues prior to its annual convention in Spokane November 12th. I'm Bob Hoff.