Continuity and Change: Immigration Worksite Enforcement in the Bush and Obama Administrations

This chapter focuses on a neglected but crucially important aspect of executive action on immigration matters: workplace enforcement. Around eight million people work illegally in the United States, representing about 5 percent of the total workforce. The majority are concentrated in low-skilled, labor-intensive jobs in industries such as meatpacking, agriculture, food service and clothing manufacture, and these industries in turn are dependent on the labor of low-paid immigrants. The US economy’s need for low-skilled and low-paid workers is a critical factor pulling illegal immigrants to the US.

Despite sharing the goal of comprehensive reform, Obama rejected the worksite enforcement practices of the Bush administration, promising a new approach. Janet Napolitano, his first Secretary of Homeland Security, criticized the Bush administration for its “rhetoric…[and] bumper sticker slogans about being tough” on worksite enforcement. The new administration would instead deliver “smart but tough” solutions, she claimed. But did her boss do any better? This chapter compares Bush’s and Obama’s workplace enforcement policies to assess the extent of the change across administrations, and it contextualizes and explains these differences with reference to the political calculations of the principals. Before doing so, however, the next section briefly outlines the legal history of worksite enforcement.