Wal-Mart will make payment of $11 million to the United States Attorney's Office.
It commands Wal-Mart to never again knowingly hire, recruit, or employ unauthorized aliens.
It mandates that Wal-Mart must develop a system to verify that all independent contractors are taking the necessary steps to comply with any and all immigration laws.
It directs Wal-Mart to create and provide, over the next 18 months, all current store managers and future store managers with appropriate training regarding immigration laws and anti-discrimination laws.
Wal-Mart must also maintain their currently existing program that lays out the process for ensuring that employees are authorized to work in the United States, and complies with anti-discrimination laws.
And, the settlement mandates that Wal-Mart continue to fully cooperate with the ongoing investigation of alleged illegal alien employment (Ramey, 2005, p. 12).
Maintenance of Innocence:
Wal-Mart continues to maintain their innocence by lack of knowledge of wrongdoing by their contractors. They back this statement with the fact that no criminal charges were filed on the company or against any of their associates. Although Wal-Mart did acknowledge that their compliance program didn't include the processes and procedures necessary to discover contractors who had broken immigration laws, failing to police these contractors is also against the law (Ramey, 2005, p. 12).
Conclusion:
It is this type of bad publicity that has fueled more fire around anti-Wal-Mart supporters, adding employment of illegal aliens to their laundry list of Wal-Mart evils (Nordlinger, 2004, p. 31). Wal-Mart's alien scandal has also prompted...
11).
In fact, there are rumblings that Wal-Mart's actions will give American capitalism a bad name in the globalized economy (Garten, 2004, p. 24). However, the settlement amount, whne compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue the company takes in, is really a drop in the bucket.
Yet, the record-breaking $11 million settlement and $4 million criminal forfeiture by the cleaning companies will go to good use. The government will use the funds for training and other initiatives in an effort to continue to prosecute individuals and organization that hire and take advantage of undocumented aliens inside the United States.
Not only is this a historic dollar amount for the immigration law enforcement, but, as noted, there are other stipulations that came with the ruling as well. Wal-Mart is now required to construct an internal program that will ensure that the organization, and all of their contractors, complies with all immigration laws in the future. This ruling clearly demonstrates the ICE's commitment to not only penalizing those who fail to comply with immigration laws, but also shows their eagerness to guide organizations into developing programs that will prevent any future violations.
References
Chisam, B. (5 Apr 2004). The time is right to reform immigration. DSN Retailing Today, 43(7), p. 11.
Garten, J. (8 Mar 2004). Wal-Mart gives globalism a bad name. Business Week, (3873), p. 24.
Miaello, M. (7 Jun 2004). Preying on human cargo. Forbes, 173(12), pp. 74-80.
Nordlinger, J. (19 Apr 2004). The new colossus. National Review, 56(7), pp. 30-32.
Penttila, C. (Apr 2004). Status woe.…
