This Is The Real Cause Of Illegal Immigration. This Right Here.

According to this, a company called Asplundh Tree Expert, based in PA,  has pleaded guilty for employing people without authorization to work in the United States.

They’ll pony up $95 million in fines for hiring THOUSANDS of immigrants, many of whom were here illegally.   $80 million of that judgment was ordered by a federal judge and the remaining $15 million came from a separate civil settlement.

This wasn’t just one of those accidental mishaps due to some missed paperwork or negligence by a lone Human Resources staffer.  ICE said that the company purposefully decentralized their hiring processes so that the senior executives could “remain willfully blind” to the fact that their lower level managers were knowingly hiring people that they shouldn’t have bee hiring. In fact, many of those managers accepted fake IDs from their new employees, and they did so on purpose and with purpose.

The only statement from the CEO of Asplundh, posted on the company website a few weeks ago, said that they took “immediate corrective action” once they found out they were under federal investigation back in 2015.

Aww.  That was diligent of them, wasn’t it?

This is a huge employer, by the way.  They have more than thirty thousand employees across the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

I gotta say, I’m thrilled with this judgment.  I’ve been SO FRUSTRATED with how easy it has been for employers to hire illegals, even with the E-Verify system that’s been in place for the better part of the last decade.  Did y’all ever read my E-Verify story?  If you haven’t, read it right here, and you’ll understand my frustration.  I wrote that 5 years ago when I was still in Human Resources, and in charge of recruiting for a life sciences company.   When I called DHS to ask them some questions about E-Verify policies, I was absolutely DUMBFOUNDED by what I learned.  You can read all about the conversation I had with them at the sourcelink.  It’s why I ended that post like this:

There’s a reason we have an illegal immigration problem. It’s because we’re not only providing illegal immigrants with jobs, but we’re not really discouraging employers from hiring them, either. THE MOST OBVIOUS solution would be to disincentivize employers from giving them jobs in the first place, by making the consequences for doing so ACTUALLY PAINFUL FINANCIALLY. If employers know they’ll be caught and fined substantially for hiring illegal immigrants, then you know what’ll happen? They’ll stop hiring them. And then you know what will happen? Illegal immigrants won’t have a reason to keep coming here illegally.

And now you see why I’m so thrilled with this judgment. It’s IMPERATIVE that the US hit employers where it hurts the most if they willfully hire illegal immigrants. The only way the problem will get solved is if illegals have no way of earning a single dime when they get here.