ATLANTA — President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has in its early stages separated local families and led to a surge in detainee populations inside Georgia’s immigrant jails. There are signs that the administration’s deportation campaign also has begun impacting the local labor market.
According to HireQuest, a recruiting agency with offices nationwide, there has been a surge in staffing inquiries for construction jobs in Atlanta.
Rick Hermanns, the company’s CEO, said that uptick probably comes from employers becoming more diligent about hiring only people living in the city legally, after historically relying on some undocumented immigrant workers. For every position it fills, HireQuest uses E-Verify — the federal government’s electronic system to check Social Security numbers and verify the work eligibility.
“Some companies are more aggressive in employing undocumented workers and it’s really more blatant in Atlanta than it is in most other places,” Hermanns said. He also noted that a “fairly significant number” of HireQuest’s construction clients have reported receiving visits from immigration authorities to job sites in recent weeks.
Besides construction, waste management and junk removal services also have registered 10% year-over-year increases in staffing inquiries at HireQuest’s Atlanta offices.
Georgia law mandates that businesses with more than 10 employees use E-Verify.
Stacy Ehrisman is an immigration attorney based in Lawrenceville, which in recent years attracted many new immigrants from the border. Ehrisman said she has been approached by numerous companies asking how to help their employees achieve lawful status. That goal is generally out of reach, she said.
Meanwhile, undocumented workers are staying home on days Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is rumored to be making the rounds.
“Several general contractors are severely short-staffed now because people are afraid to come” to work, she said. “And I don’t blame them for being afraid to come. I do think there are going to be ripple effects on the economy for decades.”
Companies may seek to get around the E-Verify requirement by misclassifying employees as independent contractors, or by outsourcing hiring to a noncompliant staffing agency or labor contractor. Third-party contractors and recruiters have been involved in recent cases of immigrant labor abuse in Georgia farms and auto manufacturers, as well as in cases of illegal child labor across the country.
“Over the last three, four years, we have probably lost more business to illegal contractors in Atlanta than almost any other city,” Hermanns said.
Conducting E-Verify checks in the workforce of a new client recently yielded just eight eligible employees in a staff of roughly 50.
“If you’re building a high-rise downtown and all of a sudden 75 people get pulled off the job, you’re taking a reputational risk. You’re also taking a project completion risk,” Hermanns said. “Some companies still choose to do that but obviously, in the last two months, the likelihood of (immigration enforcement) has just increased dramatically.”
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