Immigration Audit Reaction

Immigration Audit Reaction. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A while back the administration announced it was stepping up their immigration enforcement efforts against employers. According to Bruce Grim with the Washington State Horticulture Association that came to a head with an Immigration & Customs Enforcement audit in December. GRIM: ICE was directed to do roughly 1000 or so employer audits across the country and so obviously the one that everyone has hear about is the one that impacted Gebbers Farms. And what they were doing was looking at I-9's to make sure that they were properly filled out which as I understand it they were. When they did the e-verification part, which again the employer is not required to do – I think it's clear on the face of it the employer did everything they were supposed to do but there was obviously some degree of false documentation involved. That then compelled the termination of more than 550 workers. That has a lot of folks on the nervous side. GRIM: Clearly we have been aware and never made a secret of the fact of our concern about the number of undocumented workers or at least the number of workers for whom documentation was not accurate, employers are authorized to do very few things in that regard. If the documentation is valid on its face that's really all the employer is required to do and that's what I think employers have been doing. That could very well mean more audits for fruit growers if ICE feel like there is a pattern to the fruit industry. More tomorrow on the ICE audits. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.