While acknowledging that he has no statistics from recent field studies, he says the sense in the academic and business communities is that the conflict is largely symbolic because of dwindling enforcement efforts to go after either discrimination or illegal hiring. Not so, replies Mr. Trasvina, who, when he was named special counsel by President Clinton in the fall of 1997, became the highest-ranking Hispanic in the Justice Department. And the office has been re-energized a bit since I came. The Aztec case was also typical in that it came out of California, which has been the offices No. 1 state for enforcement. Not because there are so many immigrants or so much discrimination, he explains, but because we have very good contacts there with employer and employee groups.
Most fines are too low to litigate.
Mr. Trasvinas office logged 25 settlements in 1998, a number he predicts will go up this year for good and bad reasons. Similarly, fine totals can be isleading as a measure of enforcement. We are trying to catch cases early. We give employers a phone call to ask if they know that what has been reported to us is illegal, he says, and if a person can get considered for a job immediately, then the back pay doesnt build up. Mr. Trasvina cites as an example a 1998 settlement with a Fortune 100 company that had turned away a Nigerian-born woman who was eligible to work because she had won asylum.