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Small biz, illegals get a free pass; With focus on terror and drugs, immigrant labor laws go unenforced.

Article Excerpt
Byline: SHRUTI DATE SINGH

Jennifer Breen, who owns a 56-employee cleaning service in Chicago, spends up to $1,500 a year to verify her job applicants' immigration status. She says half the 150 job applications she gets every year come from undocumented workers.

A few years ago Ms. Breen caught a worker using a fake Social Security number. She attempted to report the worker to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), but the agency never returned her calls.

Ms. Breen still conducts background checks, although it is completely unnecessary: Federal law doesn't require employers to verify the authenticity of workers' identity documents. And federal agencies do almost nothing to enforce immigration rules against small business owners.

"This is the dirty little secret,'' says Brian R. Perryman, a retired Chicago district director for the INS. "We essentially are not enforcing our immigration laws.''

It has been six years since the government brought a civil or criminal action against a business in Chicago for hiring illegal immigrants. The INS no longer exists-in 2003 it was merged into the Department of Homeland Security....

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