The University vigorously defended its employment verification process this week after a Texas newspaper anonymously quoted a Stanford janitor it reported had entered the country illegally.

The Brownsville (Texas) Herald quoted an illegal immigrant who has been working at Stanford for five years. The man featured in the May 26 story — who “asked to remain anonymous for fear of discovery” — said he would like to join the Army under a provision in the Senate immigration bill passed last month.

The University defended its verification process, with officials saying that it follows the law and acts in good faith to hire only legal workers.

“I suppose it is always possible that someone could forge documents, but we’re very careful about the process that we follow,” said Diane Peck, the director of Human Resources.

All U.S. employers are legally required to have workers complete I-9 forms — the standard document that proves eligibility to work in the United States. At Stanford, workers must turn the forms in within three days of beginning employment. The human resource officer or the hiring supervisor checks the documents, according to Kate Chesley, the associate director of University Communications.

Payroll staff members also review each I-9 form. If a form is found to be expired, missing or incomplete, the University communicates with the worker. Paychecks are held until the required documents are presented.

“Stanford takes the I-9 process of validating employment status very seriously and has a number of procedures in place to ensure that we act in good faith in compliance with the law,” Chesley said. “Falsification of any employment-related information is grounds for termination.”

The University highlighted its participation in the Employment Verification Service program. Personnel officials said that the University has been carefully watching the development of new programs.

“We can generate a file of names, Social Security Numbers, gender, and dates of birth and ask the federal government to search for discrepancies and inconsistencies,” Chesley said.

There are no reliable estimates on the number of undocumented workers who could be employed on campus.

“I don’t know that anyone’s using papers falsely,” said local union leader Greg Pullman, the staff director for SEIU Local 715. “There are all sorts of reasons why people’s social security numbers don’t match.”

Peck said the University has no plans to investigate the story and attempt to discover who the worker could have been.

“If it’s a person quoted anonymously, I don’t know how we would follow up,” she said.

CONTRACTORS COULD BE SOURCE OF ILLEGAL HIRINGS

The University’s extensive use of contractors on campus could be a potential source of any illegal immigrants working on campus. Student group coordinators, union leaders and University officials each mentioned contracting jobs as a likely way an undocumented worker could gain employment.

“The University holds itself more accountable to its directly hired workers, but the majority of the low wage workers are subcontracted out, which allows the University to pass the responsibility of worker rights to the contracted company,” said Immigrants’ Rights Coalition member Frankie Preciado, a junior majoring in political science and Chicano Studies.

Contractors are still required to comply with federal, state and local law.

“Most of the University’s janitors are employed through a subcontractor,” Chesley said. “Failing to comply with those laws would be a breach of contract.”

Some union leaders take a different position, criticizing laws that, they say, make an essential activity illegal.

“We don’t think work should be criminalized,” Pullman said. “There are people here who just want to work hard, pay taxes and contribute to society. And they should be able to do that. It shouldn’t be a criminal act to try to feed your family.”

Pullman said SEIU 715 does not check immigration status when new members join.

“If they work for one of our employers, they are welcome into our union,” he commented. “We don’t think workers can win good wages and benefits if they are divided between legal and illegal.”

TOUGHER EMPLOYER SANCTIONS

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) requires that if the documents presented by workers “reasonably appear on their face to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them, you must accept them.”

“To do otherwise,” the USCIS Web site cautions employers, “could be an unfair immigration-related employment practice.”

The statute specifies that if the I-9 form is properly completed and the worker later turns out to have used false documents, the employer has a good faith defense against any penalties. The government must demonstrate that an employer had actual knowledge of a worker’s unauthorized status to levy fines or punishment.

President George W. Bush said last week that the penalties for “unscrupulous employers” who hire illegal workers are too soft. Employers who don’t properly check paperwork for new workers often face penalties as small as $100. Employers caught intentionally hiring an illegal immigrant face minimum fines of $250, which critics deride as a slap on the wrist. Bush, a staunch ally of the business community, has said that the shadow economy created by easy hiring encourages more illegal immigration.

“You might as well pay a speeding ticket,” Bush told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last Thursday. “We got to increase the penalties. If we want to be smart about work site enforcement, we got to say to somebody who’s breaking the law, there’s going to be a cost, and it’s more than $250.”

Peck said that the University will fully comply with any new federal rules pertaining to immigration and employment checks.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to obey the law,” she said. “If there was a change, we would comply.”

A union spokesman criticized tougher penalties on employers and said that Stanford should not be put in the business of being the immigration police when it comes to verifying paperwork.

“It’s not the University’s job,” Pullman said. “The University is not the INS.”

Preciado said the debate over employer sanctions should be more about the enforcement than the amount.

“The fastest growing economic sector in the U.S. is the service sector, where employers do not have the incentives to thoroughly enforce the laws since their economic well-being is supported by exploited cheap labor,” he said.