Thursday, April 10, 2008
Immigration Enforcement Strikes Close to Home
I have blogged several times about the stepped up workplace enforcement efforts of DHS' Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) branch. These are high profile raids of employers who employ large numbers of employees with questionable work eligibility. Nanny employers are not particularly at risk here, but this points out a larger movement to push immigration enforcement down to the employer level, on the logic that if the illegal immigrant cannot get a job they won't stay.
Yesterday, the Lansdowne Resort in Ashburn VA, an upscale hotel and convention facility a few miles from our offices, was raided and 59 illegal immigrants were arrested and detained because they could not prove their legal status.
In a related development, DHS reissued its position on SSA No-Match letters on March 26, 2008. A "No-Match" letter is generated by SSA to an employer when there is a mis-match between the employee name and Social Security Number on a W-2 form. This can be a result of a clerical error on the W-2, the failure of an employee to provide their full legal name, or may indicate that the employee is using a false SSN or a SSN assigned to another person. Because an SSA no-match letter calls into question the accuracy of the identifying information an employer received and submitted for employees, a no-match letter, according to DHS' proposed rules, places an employer on notice of the possibility that some of its employees whose SSNs are listed in the letter may not be who they claimed, and may be unauthorized to work in the U.S. If accepted, the DHS rule simply states that the employer has the obligation to perform due diligence investigation upon receipt of a no-match letter, and the failure by the employer to take the steps outlined in the letter will be interpreted by DHS to establish constructive knowledge on the part of the employer of an employee's unauthorized status - thus opening the possibility of legal action against the employer.
The moral of the story: Employers must perform due diligence when hiring to comply with all Form I-9 documentation of work eligibility. Failure to do so exposes the employer to criminal liability. We encourage clients hiring household workers to perform thorough pre-employment screening also, including reference checking and background checking.
Yesterday, the Lansdowne Resort in Ashburn VA, an upscale hotel and convention facility a few miles from our offices, was raided and 59 illegal immigrants were arrested and detained because they could not prove their legal status.
In a related development, DHS reissued its position on SSA No-Match letters on March 26, 2008. A "No-Match" letter is generated by SSA to an employer when there is a mis-match between the employee name and Social Security Number on a W-2 form. This can be a result of a clerical error on the W-2, the failure of an employee to provide their full legal name, or may indicate that the employee is using a false SSN or a SSN assigned to another person. Because an SSA no-match letter calls into question the accuracy of the identifying information an employer received and submitted for employees, a no-match letter, according to DHS' proposed rules, places an employer on notice of the possibility that some of its employees whose SSNs are listed in the letter may not be who they claimed, and may be unauthorized to work in the U.S. If accepted, the DHS rule simply states that the employer has the obligation to perform due diligence investigation upon receipt of a no-match letter, and the failure by the employer to take the steps outlined in the letter will be interpreted by DHS to establish constructive knowledge on the part of the employer of an employee's unauthorized status - thus opening the possibility of legal action against the employer.
The moral of the story: Employers must perform due diligence when hiring to comply with all Form I-9 documentation of work eligibility. Failure to do so exposes the employer to criminal liability. We encourage clients hiring household workers to perform thorough pre-employment screening also, including reference checking and background checking.
