Five percent of America’s workforce are undocumented workers (a/k/a illegals). Employers face tough choices. Under current immigration law, there is a tension between wanting to comply with immigration laws by just steering clear of anyone who looks or sounds or has a name that seems foreign and wanting to avoid discrimination lawsuits.
One tool available has been the Social Security Administration’s provision of “no match” letters to employers who received a social security number from its employee. But, up until recently, receipt of a “no match” letter didn’t constitute constructive notice of an employees illegality. If an employer gets a “no match” letter, it then has 30 days to confirm that the discrepancy wasn’t merely a clerical error (apparently most are – name changes, typos, difficult surnames. There are apparently millions of inaccuracies in the SSA’s database). The next step is for the employer to verify the documentation with the employee. If the documentation is valid and is still a “no match,” then the questioned employee has to take it up with the Social Security Administration directly. Apparently, the SSA was prepared in late August when the more stringent “no match” regulations were to go into effect (since enjoined pending a lawsuit), the SSA was prepared to send out about 8 million “no match” letters.
Employers have high litigation exposures for wrongful terminations. Department of Homeland Security regulations don’t provide employers with cover for wrongful termination actions.
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Immigration – Unintended Criminal Consequences of. The presenter described a situation where a 20 year old college student on a student visa, daughter of a foreign national corporate bigshot, was looking at a pretty lenient misdemeanor conviction on a minor crime she did commit. Turns out she’d been in a similar scrape in a different state before. Those in criminal defense work have to be mindful of this sort of situation. The consequence of accepting such a plea deal would almost certainly be deportation of the girl with no real possibility of ever coming back. The point is that attorneys representing immigrants need to either be experienced with immigration law or need to refer the client to someone who is.
Unlike some other states, Indiana courts are not required to advise defendants of immigration consequences of a conviction. That means defense counsel should be advising their clients. Diversion programs — no formal conviction entered — can nonetheless be deemed a “conviction” for purposes of the immigration laws.
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