Thread: Employers face more headaches on immigration

July 9, 2007

Employers to face more headaches on immigration
Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief

The collapse of federal immigration reform means businesses can expect more state and local laws aimed at preventing them from hiring undocumented workers or renting apartments to illegal aliens.
Immigration attorneys also think the Department of Homeland Security will move forward with a proposed federal regulation that would increase a business' liability for employing workers whose Social Security numbers don't match government databases.
"There will be mass layoffs as soon as that regulation is published," said Laura Reiff, an immigration attorney at Greenberg Traurig's McLean, Va., office and co-chair of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition.
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"In Florida, it could be catastrophic," said Wendy Smith, an employment lawyer at the Tampa office of Fisher & Phillips.
Business groups like EWIC contended immigration reform was needed to fix a dysfunctional system. Employers in many industries can't find enough legal workers, document fraud makes it hard to determine a worker's status, and the failure of Congress to address these problems has prompted states and localities to pass their own immigration laws. By putting off action on immigration reform, the Senate just made the status quo worse, Reiff said.
'Green light' for state action
State legislators around the country have introduced around 1,200 bills and resolutions related to immigration so far this year, up from 570 last year. States will see Congress' failure to address immigration as "a green light to go forward and do more," Reiff said.
"I don't think there's any question that it will energize more efforts at the state and local level," said EWIC Co-chair Randy Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Many of these efforts are aimed at employers. In Georgia, a new law went into effect July 1 that requires businesses that receive state contracts to participate in the federal government's Basic Pilot program, an electronic system that checks workers' Social Security numbers against federal databases. Colorado enacted similar legislation this year.
A new law in Oklahoma requires all employers to participate in the Basic Pilot program. Similar legislation was introduced this year in Missouri and South Carolina.
Many localities also are fighting illegal immigration by targeting businesses. Hazleton, Pa., for example, enacted an ordinance last year that enables the city to suspend a company's business license if it employs undocumented workers. The city also requires landlords to verify the legal status of their tenants.
These ordinances, however, have been challenged in the courts. Business groups contend they violate the U.S. constitution because only the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration. The same argument applies to state laws that would force companies to participate in the Basic Pilot program, they contend.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately will have to decide this issue, said Irv Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports stronger enforcement of immigration laws. FAIR contends states and localities have the right to regulate how business is conducted in their jurisdictions, and to decide how their own tax dollars are spent.
When a landlord rents an apartment or house to a family of illegal immigrants, he or she is committing everyone else in the community to pay for their education and other services, Mehlman said.
'No match' rule coming?
A bigger threat to businesses could come from the federal government. Business groups had urged the Department of Homeland Security to wait for immigration reform legislation before it issues a final regulation outlining what steps businesses should take when they receive letters notifying them that an employee's name and Social Security number don't match federal records. Now that Congress has punted on the issue, the department may soon implement that regulation, immigration attorneys predict.
As proposed last summer, businesses who receive these "no match" letters should follow certain steps, such as checking the accuracy of their own records and notifying the employee of the problem. If the discrepancy can't be resolved within two months, the employer must fire the employee or risk being charged with violating immigration laws.
The regulation won't "let people ignore problems that have stared them in the face before," Smith said.
Many workers who have been using fake Social Security numbers will lose their jobs, but "they're not just going to pack up their bags and go back to Mexico," Reiff said.
Many will stay in the United States and work in the underground economy instead, she predicted.
Employers should prepare for increased federal enforcement of immigration laws by going through the I-9 forms that workers fill out when they're hired and see if there are any obvious problems, Smith said. Employees whose Social Security numbers don't match federal records should be told to resolve the problem "or we've got to say adios," she said.


http://www.bizjournals.com/extraedge/wa ... reau1.html

Link please? - If none, I'll have to pull it.