Posted on January 16th, 2009 by Tim Eavenson | 1 Comment »
Filed under: ., HR Issues, Immigration, Politics | 
Today was supposed to be a very bad day for federal contractors.
The Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system, which checks the employment eligibility of workers against U.S. immigration records, was set to go into effect Jan. 15.
But staring at a pending lawsuit and general anger from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, DHS cut a deal with the Chamber yesterday, delaying the system’s implimentation until February 20.
The Chamber sued DHS over E-Verify, alleging that the government is exceeding its authority by mandating implimentation of the system for companies receiving over $100,000 in federal contracts.
The sides obviously disagree on the purpose of the delay, however. DHS sees it as merely giving the litigation process a chance to work. From the Washington Business Journal:
DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said … that “the brief pause in implementation” will not change the rule, “which will remain legally final and binding.”
“This pause merely allows litigants the opportunity to make their case before a judge, and prevents parties opposed to the rule from additional stalling through litigation,” Knocke said. “We are confident that their arguments will not prevail.”
But the Chamber clearly has bigger ambitions than just making its case before a judge. Its hope is that the delay, which stretches the implimentation beyond Barack Obama’s inauguration day, will give the new President a chance to end the mandate altogether. Again, from the WBJ article:
Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, said the delay in the rule’s effective date will give the new Obama administration “an opportunity to re-evaluate the efficacy of the policy.”
“We hope the incoming administration recognizes that the last thing American businesses need during these difficult economic times is more bureaucracy and higher compliance costs,” Conrad said.
“Re-evaluate the efficacy of the policy” is, of course, business-speak for “kill it”.
It seems likely that the Chamber will win this round. The mandate is costly (hundreds of millions in expenses for businesses, by some estimates), and an easy appeasement for a new administration that will be pushing hard for many bills to which the Chamber is staunchly opposed. Plus, it’s not doing away with E-Verify altogether. The system remains available for businesses on a voluntary basis. 100,000 or so companies already use the program.
Besides, the idea that anything of consequence will happen by February in a lawsuit filed in late December makes me think that not even DHS believes the delay is meant to let the litigation process work.
Posted on July 26th, 2008 by Tim Eavenson | 1 Comment »
Filed under: HR Issues |
In case you haven’t heard, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) section of the Department of Homeland Security (yeah, that’s where immigration is now) raided Agriprocessors – a Kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa, and arrested over 300 of its employees. That’s over 1/3 of Agriprocessor’s workforce and over 10% of the entire population of Postville, where the plant is located.
This raid marks a shift in enforcement policy for immigration. Usually, when illegal immigrants are caught, they are subject to civil penalties or deportation. But these workers are faring much worse. They are being prosecuted and sentenced in federal court. Over four days, 270 of those arrested were each sentenced to five months in prison and 27 more received probation after pleading guilty to the use of false immigration documents.
A lot of immigration attorneys are up in arms – calling the prosecutions unconstitutional. From the NY Times:
The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. In addition to 260 immigrants sentenced to five months for using false documents, two immigrants were sentenced to one year for that crime and another eight were sentenced to prison for a separate crime, while twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.
The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.
The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even more serious charges. Most immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve five months in prison.
The immigration advocates took their case to the hill today. In a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, attorneys and others noted the speed and language barriers as being obvious warning signs for constitutional violations. From Jurist:
During the Committee hearing Thursday, American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) [advocacy website] vice-president David Wolfe Leopold reiterated the group’s previous criticism [letter, PDF] of the convictions process, saying [testimony, PDF]:
“A prosecutor’s professional, moral, and ethical duty is to do justice, not merely to convict. This cardinal principal was ignored by the government in its zeal to criminalize undocumented workers. In essence, the expedited justice or “Fast Tracking” system concocted by the government, with the willing assistance of the US District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, was a conviction / deportation assembly line which could not be burdened with protecting the fundamental rights of the defendants, mostly poor uneducated Guatemalan farmers.”Interpreter Erik Camayd-Freixas also criticized the system [testimony, PDF], saying that the immigrants were unable to understand their rights, the charges against them, or the plea bargains to which many finally agreed. The Washington Post has more.
Representatives from both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and ICE [testimony transcripts, PDF] defended the government’s arrest and conviction processes, saying that the immigrants’ constitutional rights were strictly applied. In general, US immigration prosecutions continued to increase in March 2008, jumping nearly 50 percent from the previous month and nearly 75 percent from the previous year, according to a report [text; press release] released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) [official website] at Syracuse University. Federal immigration prosecutions have risen since February [JURIST report], when such prosecutions hit a record high. TRAC attributed the increase to Operation Streamline [Washington Post backgrounder], a joint federal program under which federal prosecutors levy minor charges against illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Tim Eavenson | No Comments »
Filed under: Uncategorized |
Regardless of where you think their loyalty lies in the user privacy debate, it’s hard to deny that YouTube is awesome.
That’s why, I assume, NY law firm Cohen & Grigsby thought it would be so awesome to put their immigration seminar on the super-popular site. Though, I doubt they thought it would be quite as super-popular as it became (yes, that does say 300,000 views and 2 video responses – eat your heart out, breakdancing cat.) CNN’s Lou Dobbs? Not a fan.
Why the attention? The video apparently instructs employers on how to make it look like they searched for qualified American workers before applying for work visas for foreign employees.
Well, the Department of Labor noticed all the media attention. And they’re not happy. From the ABA Journal:
[A]fter auditing the law firm’s filed permanent labor certification applications, beginning last year, the DOL announced today that it is placing the firm’s pending applications into department-supervised recruitment over concerns identified by the audits.
Probably not what they had in mind. In law school they told us to really watch what we put on facebook, because law firms would see it. Apparently that is also true for the firms themselves. But with the government. Then the government has to worry about regular people reading what they accidentally put on there.
The circle of life.
