ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611040135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA
SOURCE: Associated Press
Virginia welfare recipients will be given jobs vacated by illegal immigrants caught in raids by federal authorities.
The agreement by state and Immigration and Naturalization Service officials is the first of its kind nationally, combining efforts to curb illegal immigration with Virginia's welfare-to-work program.
Under the agreement, signed Friday, INS agents will continue to identify workers who are in the country illegally. Agents will remove illegal immigrants from the work site, and state social service administrators will provide the employer a pool of welfare recipients.
Employers are not obligated to hire job applicants referred by the state. But in a similar but smaller experiment in Dallas, almost all agreed to do so at the urging of immigration agents, said Neil Jacobs, assistant director of the agency's Dallas office.
Officials said the effort could provide 600 jobs a year for welfare recipients.
``Rather than the INS working in a vacuum, they have realized that they can create an opportunity for someone else, and we figure the more job opportunities, the better,'' said Scott Oostdyk, deputy director for the state Department of Social Services.
``An individual on welfare finds work, the employer can quickly fill an opening, and we win because once those vacancies are filled, we no longer have to worry about that job being a magnet for a worker who is in this country illegally,'' said Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the INS office in the District of Columbia.
Last year, INS officials removed 333 illegal immigrants from work sites in Virginia. That number could double with the hiring of new investigators and staff and the infusion of additional resources, Bergeron said.
Most of those jobs were in the food service, hotel and construction industries, paying an average hourly wage of $7.35, according to an INS analysis.
Virginia and federal officials said the state also could work to fill those jobs with legal immigrants, who are denied most forms of public assistance under the federal welfare bill signed into law in August.
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