Legal Issues Impacting Your Business
When we last left Immigration & Customs Enforcement ("ICE"), they were preparing to implement a regulation detailing how employers were to react when receiving a Social Security "no-match" letter. The regulation was to go into effect September 14. Friday (August 31), a federal judge stopped implementation temporarily based on a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the AFL-CIO and several others.
A hearing will be held October 1 to determine if the injunction against implementing the regulation will remain in place. Until then, the Social Security Administration ("SSA") is also prevented from mailing the ICE enclosures explaining the regulation with their no-match letters. We do not know at this time if SSA will still send the letters (which were set to be mailed this week) or will hold them until the situation is more clear.
While this is potentially good news for employers - who were given only 30 days to read and digest this new rule - it does NOT mean that ICE will discontinue enforcement operations. The rule merely provided instruction about what they considered to be reasonable steps upon receipt of the letters.
All indications are that enforcement will continue and increase. Since they have started to find and arrest more unauthorized workers, they also have a ready source of informants who will cooperate to catch employers not following the I-9 rules or knowingly hiring unauthorized workers.
Note also that the anti-discrimination provisions of the law are still in effect.
Stay tuned!
Lori Chesser
