Thread: Court will hide ID of illegal immigrant employer

January 4, 2008 - 2:50PM
Court will hide ID of illegal immigrant employer
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Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
A federal court will keep secret the identity of an Arizona business owner who admits in a sworn statement to hiring illegal immigrants.

The business owner, who remains anonymous, has filed an affidavit in federal court saying he was employing people not in this country legally last year when the lawsuit was filed, and he intends to continue to do so even with the new state law that took effect Jan. 1.

That law allows a judge to suspend or revoke any state licenses of firms that knowingly hire undocumented workers.

Attorney David Selden, who represents businesses challenging the law, said the purpose of the affidavit was to prove to U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake that the law will harm at least one company.

The judge had previously indicated he might not be able to rule on the validity of the law without some proof someone could get in legal trouble for disobeying it.

Selden said the move is justified because the business owner faces both the threat of prosecution if his identity becomes known, as well as the possibility of actual physical harm.

But the move drew objections from state Solicitor General Mary O’Grady, who said it is improper to let an unidentified person challenge state law. She asked Wake to quash the effort.

On Friday, though, the judge suggested he would simply sidestep the issue.

Wake pointed out that the state essentially has now agreed that the business groups challenging the law do, in fact, have legal standing to ask him to overturn it. That, he said, may make it unnecessary for him to rule on Selden’s effort to introduce the affidavit.

O’Grady said she is studying Wake’s latest ruling.

Two other business owners also filed “John Doeâ€

Two other business owners also filed “John Doeâ€

I hope they are used as very good examples for other employers.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that illegal workers were not entitled to any benefit of work illegally obtained or performed..


Could Judge Wake refer to this "labor" decision ?

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/g ... ol=00-1595
HOFFMAN PLASTIC COMPOUND v. NLRB

Reinquist wrote the majority opinion..which states in part:
"Under the IRCA regime, it is impossible for an undocumented alien to obtain employment in the United States without some party directly contravening explicit congressional policies. Either the undocumented alien tenders fraudulent identification, which subverts the cornerstone of IRCA's enforcement mechanism, or the employer knowingly hires the undocumented alien in direct contradiction of its IRCA obligations. The Board asks that we overlook this fact and allow it to award backpay to an illegal alien for years of work not performed, for wages that could not lawfully have been earned, and for a job obtained in the first instance by a criminal fraud. "

"There is no reason to think that Congress nonetheless intended to permit backpay where but for an employer's unfair labor practices, an alien-employee would have remained in the United States illegally, and continued to work illegally, all the while successfully evading apprehension by immigration authorities. Far from "accommodating" IRCA, the Board's position, recognizing employer misconduct but discounting the misconduct of illegal alien employees, subverts it.