French Employer Sanctions

Perhaps because of past tolerance of large-scale illegal alien immigration and employment up to 1973-74, the French government moved decisively in 1976 to curb illegal immigration and employment. A law providing for fines of up to 3,000 Francs (roughly $600) and jail terms of up to one month was enacted. The penalties could be doubled for repeat offenders. Simultaneously, an interagency (or interministry) authority was established to coordinate governmental efforts to curb illegal immigration and illegal alien employment. No less than five distinct enforcement agencies may impose employer sanctions in France. French law requires employers to maintain a special register indicating the names of alien workers, the date of their hiring, their nationality and the nature of the document authorizing aliens to work. All persons not in possession of French national identity cards or passports must have valid work and residency permits to seek employment. In the cases of most aliens from former French colonies, their residency permits must be stamped salaried worker before employers can legally hire them. Employers are obliged to notify authorities when they hire alien workers. These notifications must include the name and nationality of the alien hired and the date of his or her hiring. The various agencies involved with enforcement of laws against illegal alien employment are free to inspect factories and other known places of employment. However, they generally need court authorization to inspect private residences. There is a corps of inspectors specifically assigned to suppression of illegal alien employment. In 1979, these inspectors specialized in migrant workers are recorded to have made 5,044 field inspections involving firms em

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ploying 139,234 persons of whom 48,151 were aliens. Table 2 indicates the

total number of investigations reported by each enforcement agency for the

Table 2

Table 3

sectors.

Source:

Mission de liason interministerielle

pour la lutte contre les trafics de
main d'oeuvre, p. 10.

Table 3 breaks down the investigations by relevant economic

The number of infractions discovered and illegal aliens involved are

contained in Table 4.

France has a total population of around 53 million and a labor force of about 22 million, including almost 2 million legally employed aliens and over 4 million legally resident aliens. Hence, the work force inspected in the field by agents specialized in suppressing illegal alien employment amounts to only a small percentage of the total workforce. The decline in investigations subis not imputable to variations in rates of inspection sequent to field inspections of agents, which have remained roughly constant

over the years. Rather, according to French governmental sources, the decline
in investigations indicates a decline in relatively easy to detect illegal
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alien employment in urban areas. Employer sanctions and their enforcement
have had an obvious deterrent effect upon many employers but French authorities
are careful to note that sanctions have driven some employers and the illegal
aliens they hire further underground. Employers of illegal aliens in urban
areas have become more sophisticated as evidenced by the scandal discovered in
the Parisian garment industry
in 1980. Employers were able to hire
large numbers of illegal aliens and escape detection because they used appar-
ently legitimate "front" corporations to cover illegal business transactions.
Industries which seem particularly prone to illegal alien employment include

agriculture, hotels and restaurants which employ large numbers of seasonal workers. About 125,000 seasonal workers are admitted annually for temporary work for periods of up to eleven months. This alien labor flow was not affected by the recruitment stop of 1974.

Table 5 reveals the number and nature of court actions taken against employers of illegal aliens in recent years. The high number of dismissals stems from a certain inadaptation of the legal system to the problem of illegal alien employment and certain evidentiary problems. A recent report made to the Ministry of Labor recommended stiffer penalties for employers of illegal aliens and regulatory reforms which facilitate convicting such employers. Convicted employers of illegal aliens are also subject to an administrative fine levied by the National Immigration Office. The fine is 500 times the minimum guaranteed wage per hour. In 1980, this fine amounted to 4,275 Francs (roughly $1,000). Not all convicted employers have been assessed the fine, however, because of administrative foul-ups.

Although employer sanctions in France have a discernible deterrent effect, they have not resulted in a detectable decline in illegal alien residency and employment after four years. The new French government will probably step up enforcement of laws against illegal alien employment. Employers convicted of hiring illegal aliens were pointedly not extended amnesty or parole as so many other offenders were when President Mitterand took office.

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Implications of European Employer
Sanctions for the U.S. Debate

The fact that most Western European states have employer sanctions and that these sanctions have had some positive impact upon efforts to suppress illegal alien immigration and employment clearly does not mean that similar employer sanctions in the U.S. context would necessarily produce the same beneficial results. Although the United States fundamentally resembles European states in that we share democratic institutions and high technology, capitalist economies, there are important transatlantic differences which could very well alter the effects of employer sanctions here in the United States. Consequently, any conclusions or lessons to be drawn for the U.S. debate over employer sanctions from the European experience in this area must necessarily be guarded.