Hiring of illegal aliens at Walmart

Hiring of Illegal Aliens at Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has earned phenomenal success and accolades over the last 3 decades. They have grown from a local retailer to a global powerhouse. Yet, the sky is not always blue in the land of discount pricing. A variety of special interest groups often try to thwart the opening of the next SuperCenter, with concerns of taking away sales from local, small businesses and even complaints of discrimination in their hiring and promotion processes. Now these groups can add another item to their list of concerns when it comes to another Wal-Mart opening in their town, the employment of illegal aliens.

A long and involved investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, discovered that the janitorial contractors providing cleaning services to Wal-Mart had employed illegal aliens to fill their contract. A landmark $11 million civil settlement was awarded on March 18, 2005. In addition to this historic settlement imposed on the retailing giant, 12 organizations that had been involved in providing cleaning services to Wal-Mart have had to forfeit another $4 million to the United States, in addition to pleading guilty to criminal immigration charges.

The $11 million settlement and the $4 million criminal forfeiture were pronounced by Assistant Secretary Michael Garcia. Garcia indicated that these two sanctions were momentous strides forward in enforcing the field of immigration employment. As a reference of perspective, the $11 million civil settlement is almost four times greater than any other single sanction ever levied on an organization, for employing illegal aliens.

The Investigation:

The case originated as a nationwide investigation into alleged employment of illegal aliens by the janitorial businesses that had been contracted to Wal-Mart. The investigation was conducted by ICE, under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the United States Attorney's Office, in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, as well as the Honesdale, Pennsylvania Police Department assisted with the investigation.

The Wal-Mart investigation originally began as an immigration operation in 1998 and another in 2001. In both of these investigations, cleaning contractors were investigated as it had been discovered that they had been hiring unauthorized workers from Eastern Europe. By 2003, these investigations had evolved into a major investigation of Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart relies on more than 700 vendors for their cleaning services (Penttila, 2004, p. 23). On October 23, 2003, immigration enforcement officials put for the enforcement actions at approximately 60 Wal-Mart locations, in 21 states. Officials arrested nearly 250 illegal aliens, employed by cleaning contractors, during this massive operation. Arrested individuals proceeded immediately into deportation proceedings (Maiello, 2004, p. 74).

With the sting of the operation being felt. Wal-Mart contacted the federal authorities. The organization guaranteed their full cooperation into the investigations, regarding the janitorial services they had hired. The organization also assured officials that they would implement a renewed commitment to make certain that they would comply with any and all federal immigration laws. This corporate commitment eventually led to the civil settlement of $11 million.

The Civil Settlement:

The terms of the civil settlement are quite clear although they do not entail any admission of wrongdoing.

Wal-Mart will make payment of $11 million to the United States Attorney's Office.

It commands Wal-Mart to never again knowingly hire, recruit, or employ unauthorized aliens.

It mandates that Wal-Mart must develop a system to verify that all independent contractors are taking the necessary steps to comply with any and all immigration laws.

It directs Wal-Mart to create and provide, over the next 18 months, all current store managers and future store managers with appropriate training regarding immigration laws and anti-discrimination laws.

Wal-Mart must also maintain their currently existing program that lays out the process for ensuring that employees are authorized to work in the United States, and complies with anti-discrimination laws.

And, the settlement mandates that Wal-Mart continue to fully cooperate with the ongoing investigation of alleged illegal alien employment (Ramey, 2005, p. 12).

Maintenance of Innocence:

Wal-Mart continues to maintain their innocence by lack of knowledge of wrongdoing by their contractors. They back this statement with the fact that no criminal charges were filed on the company or against any of their associates. Although Wal-Mart did acknowledge that their compliance program didn't include the processes and procedures necessary to discover contractors who had broken immigration laws, failing to police these contractors is also against the law (Ramey, 2005, p. 12).

Conclusion:

It is this type of bad publicity that has fueled more fire around anti-Wal-Mart supporters, adding employment of illegal aliens to their laundry list of Wal-Mart evils (Nordlinger, 2004, p. 31). Wal-Mart's alien scandal has also prompted increased immigration reforms (Chisam, 2004, p. 11).