Spokane7
32°
September 4, 2010 in Nation/World
Colleges sued for asking for green cards
Feds say employers can’t single out job applicants
WASHINGTON – Employers who hire illegal immigrants can be fined, but the Obama administration warned this week that they also can be fined for asking legal immigrants to show their green card before hiring them.
The Justice Department’s civil rights division sued the Maricopa County Community Colleges in Arizona, seeking damages from schools for having “intentionally committed document abuse discrimination.”
Prior to this year, the local colleges in the Phoenix area asked job applicants who were not U.S. citizens to show a driver’s license, a Social Security card and their “permanent resident card,” commonly called a green card.
The Justice Department said a valid driver’s license and a Social Security card are usually sufficient to show that a person is authorized to work. Requesting a green card amounts to “immigration-related employment discrimination,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Federal law forbids treating “authorized workers differently during the hiring process based on their citizenship status,” Perez said. He said the department’s Office of Special Counsel will bring legal actions against employers who impose “unnecessary and discriminatory hurdles to employment for work-authorized non-citizens.”
The suit against the Maricopa community colleges was announced Monday and could impact employers across the nation.
“Employers are getting very mixed messages from the government,” said Jessica Vaughn, a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies.
On the one hand, employers have been told they need to do more to verify that their workers are legal and authorized to work in the United States. Federal immigration law says hiring “an unauthorized alien” can result in fines of up to $3,000 per worker. However, another provision of the same law bars employers from requesting “more or different documents” than are needed to prove legal status.
In the Maricopa college case, the Justice Department said it wanted “full remedial relief” for 247 noncitizens who applied for jobs with the community college district between August 2008 and January of this year, plus a civil penalty of $1,100 for each.
“We are extremely disappointed by the Justice Department’s action. We had no intent to discriminate against any foreign national, and we feel we have been singled out for the maximum penalty under the law,” said Charles Reinebold, a spokesman for the community colleges. “There was no actual harm here. This was a paperwork error, and we revised it after it was brought to our attention.”
Vaughn said she was “very surprised the administration would resort to a lawsuit. In the past, the emphasis has been on mediation to resolve these issues.”
But others applauded the move to enforce the anti-discrimination parts of the law. “This is blatant discrimination, and we get calls about it all the time. We hope to see more lawsuits like this,” said Gening Liao, a lawyer for the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles.
Obama sends 2013 budget proposal to Congress 
WSU Text-to-Win Contest 
EWU Text-to-Win Contest 
Enter to win tickets to see Adam Carolla at the Knitting Factory 
greyhound2 on September 04 at 7:23 a.m.
The Federal government hasn’t, isn’t and won’t enforce its own immigration laws and additionally, works to prevent anyone else from doing so either. It is the local and state property owners who get stuck subsidizing employers who hire illegal immigrants with increased costs on the social safety net of welfare, health care and education.
Ninch on September 04 at 8:52 a.m.
Wow, the Obama administration has set employers up to fail with a Catch-22. Here is a story from February regarding hiring illegal immigrants:
“Federal immigration authorities had alerted Gebbers Farms (Brewster, WA) that a number of its employees’ hiring forms were suspect. Unless those employees could prove they were in this country legally, the company would let them go. Many couldn’t. Like the vast majority of America’s agricultural work force, they were illegal immigrants who used fake documents to get jobs picking and packing fruit, in this case in and around this small town on the Columbia River north of Wenatchee. Five days later, the company dismissed an estimated 550 workers — equal to about a quarter of Brewster’s population. It was the biggest firing of its kind ever seen in Washington. And former workers say the letters and firings are still coming.”
Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011069760_brewster14.html
So apparently, Gebbers Farms was asking for “proof” that these workers were in the country legally (over and above a drivers license and a social security card). According to this recent Arizona lawsuit, this action would be deemed illegal and discriminatory?
There was also some reference to using e-verify (federal online program to run a worker’s information against Homeland Security and Social Security databases to check whether the person is authorized to work in the U.S.) According to several news sources a study showed that the system flags 1% of authorized workers as unauthorized (so are they allowed to be asked to show immigration documents?). In contrast, the system also wrongly deemed 54% of illegals were authorized to work. So what is an employer supposed to do?
Oh, yeah, Here is a solution that runs counter to the Obama administration suing colleges: “The government recently added a tool aimed at cutting down on the number of illegal workers who slip through E-Verify using stolen identities by letting employers match photos on GREEN CARDS against photos in government immigration databases.” Source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/26/20100226everify0226.html
So green card verification is OK except when it is NOT OK.
A similar situation has arisen with the lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio where a 2008 audit memo from ICE stated that he was in compliance and did not discriminate, but now Obama/Holder are suing him to get more paperwork to show that Arpaio is out of compliance and discriminatory. So what the heck is Obama and Holder doing? It really does appear that they are targeting Arizona for harassment.
Yet, the U.S.S. Cole killer is not being prosecuted. The 9-11 killers are not being prosecuted. The documented voter intimidation by Black Panthers in Philly was dropped. Obama and Holder’s priorities are so wrong.
misjustice on September 04 at 12:06 p.m.
This does seem like a Catch-22, very confusing and seemingly contradictory.