If you enter this country illegally but need a job, pick any nine numbers. Now, give them to an employer.
According to Lee Driscoll, you have just established a Social Security ID the government doesn’t care to verify.
Driscoll runs Wynkoop Holdings, the company that operates eight restaurants partly owned by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Two months ago, Raul Gomez-Garcia, an illegal immigrant employed by a Wynkoop restaurant, allegedly murdered Denver Detective Donnie Young. Since then, Driscoll has spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to keep his restaurants running and his workforce legal.
It is harder than it might seem.
“The issue is not pay and benefits,” said Driscoll, whose lowest-paid employees make at least $8 an hour and get health insurance and a retirement plan. “The issue is the jobs (busing tables and washing dishes) are very hard. The simple truth is, it’s foreign workers who are willing to do these jobs.”
A new hiring policy that matches names to Social Security numbers immediately after hiring seems to be working. Of 53 recent hires, Wynkoop officials said only one person had been excluded. That doesn’t count folks who walked away when they discovered they would need a legitimate Social Security number.
Still, Wynkoop took an important step toward making sure the restaurants in which the mayor owns a 40 percent interest have 100 percent legal employees.
When Wynkoop announced its new Social Security verification policy, about a third of the company’s 50 employees with disputed numbers quit, Driscoll said. Another third lost jobs for other reasons. But the final third have never complied with a company directive to explain why their names and numbers don’t match. On Friday, Driscoll said he wouldn’t force these workers to comply.
“It was not a condition of their employment that they provide verifiable Social Security numbers to us,” Driscoll said.
That sounds crazy.
“It may be insane,” said immigration lawyer Ann Allott, “but it’s the law.”
The IRS has authority to fine employers for each employee whose name and number doesn’t match. But the agency rarely gets the names or levies the fines.
Allott says that’s because of an unwritten code.
“It’s real hard to run restaurants without some illegal help,” she explained. “You can’t clean buildings without illegals. You can’t do agriculture or construction. We have a huge reliance on illegal foreign workers.”
“We don’t knowingly hire illegal aliens,” Driscoll said. “We follow the law. But the law is not going to vet out undocumented, illegal aliens as it is enforced.”
The Social Security Administration sends annual notices to employers that list employees whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match. But those same notices tell employers they may violate laws by automatically firing people.
It takes at least 16 weeks for immigration and Social Security officials to sort out discrepancies of employees who raise the issue, Driscoll added.
Wynkoop has decided to let naturally high employee turnover weed out any illegal aliens left among veteran workers.
“The mayor is not going to comment on any Wynkoop policies,” Hickenlooper’s spokeswoman said Friday. But the mayor does favor a guest-worker policy.
A blind trust has managed the mayor’s restaurant interests since he stepped down as Wynkoop’s chairman and chief executive to run for office.
“I have had no discussions with the mayor,” Driscoll said of Wynkoop’s new hiring and retention policies.
Staying out of the loop and keeping quiet doesn’t let the mayor dodge the illegal immigration controversy.
The Wynkoop has set a good example, but this furor seems destined to continue until immigration policies make sense.
The way this country depends on illegal foreign labor, that could be a very long time.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@ denverpost.com.
