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April 8, 2009

Scam targets immigrants

By  Jeremy Walsh / Indypendent


State working to fine job agencies for stealing finder’s fees: Peralta

As the economy flounders and more people seek work, state legislators are trying to stiffen the fines on employment agencies that attempt to swindle clients out of a finder’s fee.

State Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D−Jackson Heights) said his office has been flooded with complaints about such agencies in the last two months. The agencies promise clients a job, accept a payment between $100 and $150 and then send them off to a false address or a business not looking for extra help, Peralta said.

“It seems like Consumer Affairs has been doing its job,” Peralta said at a news conference Friday. “But guess what? They’re back.”

Julissa Bissono, a coordinator with the immigrant rights nonprofit Make the Road New York, said her agency has also seen a sharp increase in complaints from immigrants, whose job searches cost them both time and money.

“Sometimes this is their last $100 and they spend it and can’t get it back,” Bissono said.

Corona resident Julio Ruiz, 30, a Honduran immigrant, said he paid one agency $120 for construction jobs only to be sent to locations that were not hiring.

“I’m hoping not only for myself, but for other victims that there is some help,” he said through an interpreter.

Of 368 licensed employment agencies in the city, 40 are located in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, Peralta said. The city Department of Community Affairs has padlocked nine of them, he said.

Peralta urged residents to dial 311 to report unscrupulous or unlicensed employment agencies, noting the city service does not ask questions about immigration status.

He also said the state Legislature is pushing forward a bill that would increase the fines for employment agency violations from $100 to $500 per infraction. The bill would also classify an accumulation of three or more violations over five years as a misdemeanor crime.


More on: Workplace Justice 

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Victory for Immigrant Families: Preventing Unjust Deportations in NYC

On March 18, 2013, Mayor Bloomberg signed new legislation to stop federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from using NYC’s criminal justice system to deport thousands of New Yorkers.

Building on legislation we helped to win just over a year ago, Local Laws 21 and 22 prohibit not only the Department of Correction but now also the NYPD from spending millions of city taxpayer dollars to hold individuals on behalf of ICE agents for detention and deportation. Each year, thousands of New York families will stay together who would otherwise have been torn apart by overly aggressive, indiscriminate immigration enforcement.

At a moment when the country is debating immigration reform, with these laws, New York City sends a clear message to Washington that tearing apart thousands of immigrant families is bad policy.

With your support, we look forward to winning national reform that keeps families together. We thank our partners at the Center for Popular Democracy, the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic and the bills’ sponsors, NYC Council Speaker Quinn and Council Member Mark-Viverito, for their courageous leadership.


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