This article is a collection of commentary on an article written by Michael Fix

Briggs, Vernon M., Jr.

English

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12-1-1990 
Comments on "The Findings and Policy Implications of the GAO 
Report and the Urban Institute Hiring Audit" by Michael Fix 
Vernon M. Briggs Jr. 
Cornell University, vmb2@cornell.edu 
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Comments on "The Findings and Policy Implications of the GAO Report and the 
Urban Institute Hiring Audit" by Michael Fix 
Abstract 
"This article is a collection of commentary on an article written by Michael Fix." 
Keywords 
human, resource, ILR, GAO, report, Michael Fix, hiring, audit, policy, migration, immigration, illegal, legal, 
employer, IRCA, Urban Institute, U.S., comply 
Disciplines 
Human Resources Management | Labor Relations | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Briggs, V. M., Jr. (1990). Comments on "The findings and policy implications of the GAO Report and the 
Urban Institute hiring audit" by Michael Fix [Electronic version]. The International Migration Review, 24, 
828-830. 
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/9/ 
Required Publisher Statement 
Published version posted with special permission of the copyright holder, Blackwell Publishing. 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/9 
Comments on "The Findings and 
- 
Policy Implications of the 
GAO Report and the Urban Institute 
Hiring Audit" by Michael Fix 
Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. 
Cornell University 
Michael Fix begins with a review of the circumstances that led to the issuance 
by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) of its congressionally mandate 
study of the implementation of the employer sanctions provisions of the 
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). I would only take 
exception with one passing remark in this section. It is the use of the word 
"appease" in his mention that IRCAprovided $4 billion of federal funds "to 
appease states that feared that their services would be overrun by legalized 
aliens." Immigration policy has been held by the Supreme Court since 1892 
(EMie v. United States) to be solely the responsibility of the federal govern- 
ment. The full impact of the consequences of immigration policy-making, 
however, is played out in the cities and states where the immigrants actually 
live and work. Given that the legalization procedures involved at least 2.2 
million persons (plus several million more illegal immigrants who did not 
apply or who were found not to be eligible for the amnesty) and that the full 
effects of the total number of additional family members of amnesty recip- 
ients who may eventually have their status adjusted is still unknown, the 
concerns of local and state governments over the derivative financial costs 
involved are very legitimate. Indeed, I have long believed that the federal 
government-as a matter of practice-should provide full funding to com- 
munities that are financially impacted by immigration just as it once did for 
local communities that were adversely impacted by the employment effects 
associated with the placement of national defense installations around the 
country. If the federal government were obligated to assume these financial 
costs, policy-makers might be less mesmerized by the alleged benefits and 
act more responsibly if they also had to embrace considerations of the actual 
costs of their decisions. 
Turning to the thrust of Fix's article, he did have access to the critical 
memo from Eleanor Chelimsky that was unavailable to me at the time I 
prepared my review. The charge by Chelimsky that the GAO report may 
828 IMR Volume xxiv, No. 4 
DOCUMENTATION 829 
have overstated any adverse effects of IRCA (because it did not establish a 
baseline in order to distinguish what degree of discrimination existed in the 
labor market prior to IRCA) is a very serious concern. Indeed, to a method- 
ological purist of the field of public policy evaluation, this omission would 
be considered a fatal flaw. The absence of a baseline, renders the precise 
numerical estimates of discrimination, that the report attributed to IRCA, 
suspect. Aside from this concern, it is still not possible to read the GAO report 
and fail to conclude that IRCA did cause new behavior responses by some 
employers. Whether by accident or by malevolence, these responses had 
adverse employment consequences-especially to persons of Hispanic ori- 
gin. It is impossible to determine the exact magnitude of these new burdens. 
I also agree with Fix's observation that it is more likely that employers 
overstated their compliance practices in their responses to the employer 
survey rather than to have exaggerated their failures to comply. Hence, as 
stated in my article, I concur that some policy changes are required. 
The preponderance of Fix's paper pertains to the "hiring audit" done by 
the Urban Institute and of which he was, at least partially, involved. He 
frankly and candidly states that the hiring audit confirmed the existence of 
disparate treatment against Hispanics, but "it did not link differential 
treatment to IRCA." It showed only that Hispanics "fared worse in terms of 
outcomes" which lead him to conclude that there appears to be significant 
labor market discrimination against Hispanics. Indeed, he says that Hispa- 
nic labor market experiences "may be more analogous to that of blacks." 
No one familiar with the vast literature on employment discrimination will 
contest the fact that there has been discrimination against Hispanics in the 
labor market nor that there is still discrimination. I do not know of any 
comparative studies, however, that show discrimination against Hispanics 
to be near that which confronts blacks. But, if the hiring audit did not mean 
to imply at least some link between IRCA's sanctions and the discriminatory 
outcomes it measured, then what was the purpose of including the findings 
of the hiring audit in a study whose only purpose was to detect the effects 
of the sanctions on employer conduct? I do not want to defend the findings 
of the hiring audit but I think Fix may have conceded too much in his 
remarks. 
One serious problem with interpreting the findings of the audit is that it 
does not reveal anything about the characteristics of the employers. Were 
they all non-Hispanic whites? Were some black? Were some Hispanic? Why 
did 11 percent of the results of the non-Hispanic whites encounter unfavor- 
able treatment? This aspect of the GAO study raises more questions than it 
answers. This is not meant to belittle GAO's work. Instead, as I suggested 
in my article, the findings have reopened the Pandora's Box pertaining to 
the entire subject of the magnitude and dimension of labor market discrim- 
830 INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW 
ination in the United States. The Federal government's interest in this vital 
question has been downplayed or even suppressed since the advent of the 
Reagan-Bush Administration. If the GAO report helps to rekindle an active 
concern in the importance of equal employment opportunity policies, it will 
have made a major contribution to the nation's long-term welfare. 
IRCA should not be made the scapegoat in this issue. I would submit that 
the economic advancement of minority group citizens requires that a much 
stronger employer sanctions program be enacted than currently exists. I 
agree wit11 Fix that it is imperative that effects of employer sanctions be 
continually monitored. We disagree that future research might still provide 
a reason to sunset employer sanctions; I do not see any evidence to suggest 
that this is a conceivable policy outcome. I do see the necessity to make 
employer sanctions stronger (by squarely addressing the issue of worker 
identification, reducing the number of acceptable documents and adding 
financial penalties on illegal immigrants who are found to be employed). 
As for the issue of whether the "testers" used in the hiring audit were 
actually indistinguisl~able to employers, I cannot resolve that methodolog- 
ical debate. It seems that the Urban Institute officials thought they were 
indistinguishable; Peter Skerry said they were not; and the GAO was 
uncertain since the report makes it clear that there is not any way to know 
exactly how employers actually perceived interviewees. 


Comments on  The Findings and Policy Implications of the GAO Report and the Urban Institute Hiring Audit  by Michael Fix

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Briggs, Vernon M. Jr.

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Comments on The Findings and Policy Implications of the GAO Report and the Urban Institute Hiring Audit by Michael Fix

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