Hiring Risk

Isn't the immigration issue just a matter of security?

By Bob Bragdon, Publisher, CSO

October 01, 2006 — CSO — For the past six months, I have played spectator to the national debate on immigration, watching competing political groups debate their positions. I've watched the CEOs of some major corporations call for a reform of immigration laws that would provide a kind of amnesty to those already in this country illegally. (Didn't we do that in the 1980s?) And believe me, I know how hard it can be to find good workers. And maybe I've been spending too much time with all of you and it's made me paranoid, but I have to ask: At the end of the day, isn't this immigration issue just a matter of security?

When your business hires employees, you welcome them into the "trusted" category of individuals who help make your organization work. As a best practice, you should be conducting background examinations to ensure you aren't inheriting someone else's problem employee. (At a minimum, employers should be asking new hires to fill out an I-9 form, which requires both citizens and noncitizens to show they can legally work in the United States.) But what if those individuals, those new hires, are in the country illegally? What does that say about them? And how can you conduct a proper background screening on them?

To take the point further, when you hire an unvetted worker, what type of risk is your business taking?

Your organizations look to you as security executives to advise them on just these types of issues, and I trust that you do. Maybe some companies have done the risk assessment and decided that the benefits

outweigh the risks, but I find the equation difficult to defend.

I am most concerned about those business leaders who, while not advertising their position, condone hiring workers without checking their status. I think about this invitation to risk—and then I look at another indicator of how businesses are dealing with crime. They sweep it under the rug.

According to the "2006 eCrime Watch Survey," which CSO just completed with our partners at the U.S. Secret Service, Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University's CERT, 55 percent of businesses surveyed experienced some sort of electronic crime committed by an insider during the past year, with individual company losses up 46 percent to $739,700.

However, fewer than 28 percent of these crimes were referred to law enforcement. It appears that fear of negative publicity was a factor; survey takers cited harm to their organization's reputation as one of the worst impacts of electronic crime.

And when it came to background screening, only 73 percent of businesses surveyed said they do it.

It's true that in the case of documented workers, you can often do some form of background check depending on where they are from. But in the case of illegal workers, you are doing no background check, a very limited one or one based on a falsified identity. Some would say you could face these same problems with each new employee you bring on board. Maybe. But at least with most legal residents, you aren't starting with a handicap that should be avoided in the first place.

I understand that it's difficult to conduct a background exam on an individual from another country. But shouldn't we at least understand that those who have entered our nation illegally have already weighed our laws against their personal interests and chosen the latter? What does that decision say about them? And what does it say about those businesses who hire them?

⬠Bob Bragdon, publisher

bbragdon@cxo.com

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Other stories by Bob Bragdon, Publisher, CSO

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