Illegal workers lose jobs at unique American company

illegal workers lose jobs at unique American company

A drama that is playing out at American Apparel, the nation’s largest American-based clothing manufacturer, could tell a lot about the future of immigration enforcement and immigration reform in the United States.

American Apparel, a young company founded just 20 years ago by a Canadian-born entrepreneur, has spent most of its corporate life swimming against the tide.

It evolved from a producer of specialty T-shirts into an integrated company that controls not only production, but retailing, with more than 250 company-owned stores throughout the country. Just as notably, it continues to produce its apparel in the United States, and actually exports American-made clothing to other countries.

And now, American Apparel has another distinction. It is firing nearly a fourth of its Los Angeles factory work force based on an audit by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that found the irregularities with those employees’ identity documents.

Finishing the job

The New York Times reports that the investigation was begun 17 months ago under the administration of President George W. Bush and concluded under President Barack Obama. It is a continuation of a policy based on the concept that if illegal immigrants come to the United States for jobs, they will leave if the jobs are no longer available. Countervailing opinion holds that immigrant workers are here doing the jobs that Americans will not do. But American Apparel jobs would not fit that description.

American Apparel has prided itself on not running sweatshops. Its pay is well-above average for its industry at $12 per hour and the company provides health care coverage. Recently it distributed $18 million in stock to the employees.

It will be interesting to see in coming weeks and months the level of success the company has in replacing its presumably illegal workers with American citizens or legal immigrants.

It is not hard to imagine what the response would be in the Mahoning Valley to an advertisement seeking to fill hundreds of entry-level jobs paying about $500 per week, with benefits.

Some of the employees at American Apparel had been with the company for a decade and had risen to supervisory jobs paying $45,000 a year. Will those employees uproot their families and return to Mexico or Central America, or will seek another role in the underground economy? Will displaced American Apparel employees take jobs now held by other illegal immigrants, forcing those people out of work and back across the border?

Employers have long been required to demand proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when hiring. Some employees provided fraudulent documentation; some employers have no doubt been happy to accept such documentation as long as they felt they could get away with it.

Compliance is the key

The American Apparel case sets a new bar for compliance. In the last year of the Bush administration, ICE conducted heavy-handed raids on several meat-packing plants, rounding up illegal workers. Negative reaction to the stories of mothers arrested at the plants and shipped out of the country leaving their children stranded and companies forced to curtail their business because of the raids spelled an end to that tactic.

The method of enforcement pursued with American Apparel is a sensible one that recognizes the complicated reality of illegal immigration in the United States. Tens of millions of immigrants did not arrive in the United States overnight and they and their families cannot be evicted overnight. But that doesn’t mean the problem should be ignored.