A major focus of immigration laws in the United States is to reduce the influx of illegal aliens into the country. This goal would be difficult to achieve without the regulation of U.S. employers with respect to whom they employ. Many illegal aliens enter the United States to better their economic situations through obtaining work that is more lucrative than employment in their countries of origin. Without effective legal prohibitions, many U.S. employers would have no incentive to determine whether or not persons they employ are illegal aliens, since many illegals are willing to work at wages lower than those that would be demanded by U.S. citizen employees.
In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to provide regulation at the federal level regarding the employment of aliens. As a whole, the IRCA provides legal protections for aliens who are allowed to work in the United States, as well as prohibitions against employers hiring illegal aliens. We have already examined in an earlier lesson the provisions of this statute that prohibit employment discrimination against persons on the basis of citizenship. At this time, we will examine the provisions of the IRCA that prohibit the employment of illegal aliens in the United States.
The IRCA attempts to prevent employers from employing illegal aliens by requiring all U.S. employers, regardless of size, to examine documentary verification from all hired job applicants of two facts: (1) their identity (the worker actually is who he says he is) and (2) their eligibility to work in the United States (the worker is a U.S. citizen or a legal alien authorized to work while in the United States). Employers must demand this proof of identity and eligibility to work of all employees, regardless of their physical appearance, their names, and the distance of the employer from national borders.
The IRCA specifies that all workers must be required to produce verification of their identity and eligibility to work within three (3) business days of being hired by the employer. To ensure that employers comply with the verification requirements, the IRCA requires that for each employee, the employer must submit an I-9 form. The I-9 form, formally titled the “Employee Eligibility Verification Form,” specifies exactly what documents an employee must produce that are satisfactory evidence of identity and eligibility to work. An example of an acceptable document for verification of identification, but not citizenship, is a picture driver’s license. A U.S. birth certificate or a social security card are acceptable proofs of eligibility to work, but not proof of identity. Two examples of documents acceptable to prove both identity and eligibility to work would be a U.S. passport or an Alien Registration Card (green card).
After the I-9 form is filled out by the employer, listing the name of the employee and the type(s) of acceptable documentation presented, the form is submitted to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Penalties for employers that do not comply with the requirements to submit completed I-9 forms for each employee, or that are found to actually employ illegal aliens, are significant. The IRCA provides for civil penalties to be assessed against an employer for each illegal alien found to be employed and up to $1,000.00 per incident of not keeping proper records. If the employer engages in repeat violations, the result can be fines of up to $10,000.00 and even imprisonment of employer officials. Enforcement of the provisions of the IRCA with respect to preventing the employment of illegal aliens is handled by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The IRCA deals with a narrow issue of employment law, but familiarity with its requirements is important because these impact the operations of virtually all U.S. employers, regardless of size or location. It is just as much a violation of the law for an employer in Iowa to fail to verify the identity and eligibility to work of a white male named Smith who speaks English with a local accent as it is for an employer in California to hire without question a brown-skinned female named Fuentes who speaks only Spanish. The bottom line is that every time a U.S. employer hires a new employee, provisions of the IRCA must be adhered to and an I-9 form must be filed.