LOS ANGELES
Frustrated by lax enforcement of immigration laws, businesses are taking their fight against illegal immigration to court, accusing competitors of achieving an unfair advantage by hiring illegal workers.
Businesses and anti-illegal immigration groups say the legal action was an attempt to create an economic deterrent against hiring illegal employees.
“We see the legal profession bringing to this issue the kind of effect it’s had on consumer product safety,” says Mike Hethmon of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington D.C.-based group backing the efforts.
In the first of a series of lawsuits, a temporary employment agency in California that supplies farm workers sued a grower and two competing companies on Monday.
Similar cases claiming violations of federal anti-racketeering laws have yielded mixed results. The California lawsuit is believed to be the first based on a state’s unfair-competition laws, legal experts say.
Santa Monica-based Global Horizons claimed in the lawsuit that Munger Brothers, a grower, hired illegal immigrant workers from Ayala Agricultural Services and J&A Contractors. All the defendants are based in California’s farm-rich Central Valley.
