The American Civil Liberties Union, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Wednesday. The suit seeks to stop the planned enforcement of new rules that could have a large affect on the country’s immigrant labor.
The new rules, set to take effect Sept. 14, will violate workers’ rights and impose burdensome obligations on employers who receive “no-match” letters from the Social Security Administration, according to the AFL-CIO suit filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
“We’ve seen employers use these no-match letters as a union busting tool,” said Ana Avendano, an AFL-CIO attorney and director of its immigrant worker program. “Employers will look at these letters, see all the new burdens, and just decide to fire people.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the lawsuit was “an obvious attempt to impede the department’s ability to enforce our immigration laws. It is completely without merit and we intend to fight it vigorously.”
Currently, the Social Security Administration sends “no match” letters to workers and their employers notifying them of information discrepancies. The letters are not shared with other government agencies because of privacy laws.
Although employers are prohibited from hiring illegal workers, their responsibilities with the letters have generally ended with notifying the workers of the discrepancies. Many employers have traditionally viewed the letters, and the small fines they sometimes incur, simply as a cost of doing business.
Under the new rules, those who do not comply could be deemed as knowingly hiring an illegal worker, which could result in fines and criminal prosecution. The planned crackdown comes after immigration reform legislation in Congress fell apart this summer. Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the administrative sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.
The plan has created deep concern in immigrant communities and among businesses and unions, as it’s an open secret that millions of illegal immigrants work “on the books” with fake names and Social Security numbers and other bogus documents. The plaintiffs argue the SSA’s national data base is riddled with errors, and that numbers can be incorrectly flagged due to typos, worker mistakes while filing out tax forms or a name change that was not reported after marriage or other reasons.