Penalties for Hiring Illegal Immigrant Workers?

What? Penalites for knowingly hiring illegal immigrant workers? I hope you can can you feel the sarcasm...

I ran across this article on CNN titled, "Judge puts hold on immigration penalty letters to employers"

Check out this quote from the article...

The Social Security Administration has sent out "no-match" letters for more than two decades warning employers of discrepancies in the information the government has on their workers. Employers often brushed aside the letters, and the small fines that sometimes were incurred, as a cost of doing business.

But this year, those letters are to be accompanied by notices from the Department of Homeland Security outlining strict new requirements for employers to resolve those discrepancies within 90 days or face fines or criminal prosecution if they're deemed to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

What's your take on this?

I'll have to admit that I really haven't been tracking this topic lately and just stumbled upon this article last week. My first question is why this has taken so long to really enforce? I would say that this has been a problem and concern for a long time so we'll have to see if this extra step by the Department of Homeland Security will start to 1. discourage employers from knowingly employing illegal immigrants and 2. discourage illegals from entering the US.

Check out this article regaring what New Jersey police are now being required to do..."New Jersey law enforcement was ordered Wednesday to notify federal immigration officials whenever someone arrested for an indictable offense or drunken driving is determined to be an illegal immigrant".

I also went to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website and found some great consolidated information - here.