California: Labor Commissioner Tells State Labor Offices To Kick ICE Out
“The presence of immigration officers in state offices could disrupt the enforcement of labor laws”
California’s labor commissioner has told the state’s labor offices to remove federal immigration agents because their presence discourages illegals from reporting labor violations.
California’s top labor law enforcer wants federal immigration agents to stay away from offices where state investigators weigh claims about underpaid employees and workplace retaliation.
Labor Commissioner Julie Su last month directed her staff to turn away Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unless the federal officers have warrants.
Her directive followed three instances over the past 10 months in which immigration agents sought information about California workers who had filed claims against employers. In two cases, immigration agents attempted to attend hearings where investigators discuss claims with workers and their employers, Su said. In all three cases, the agents left when they were asked, she said.
Su, the state’s labor commissioner since 2011, did not know how the immigration agents learned about the appointments.
Those contacts with immigration officers dovetail with a surge in complaints from California workers about employers threatening to have them deported. Last year, Su’s office in the Department of Industrial Relations investigated 14 complaints from workers who claimed their employers threatened them with immigration enforcement.
So far this year, the department has opened 58 immigration-based retaliation cases, Su said.
She said the presence of immigration officers in state offices could disrupt the enforcement of labor laws by discouraging immigrant workers from reporting employers who short them on wages or unfairly punish them in other ways.
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Comments
They can refuse ICE agents entry onto their property without a warrant, but they can’t stop them from waiting outside on the street.
i’m of 2 minds about this –
1 – we need to call these ‘immigrants’ by what they actually are, that they are INVADERS, who do not have any rights, similar to home invasion tugs.
2 – the employers are the ones who need to be locked up for knowingly highering illegals – make that a crime, if it is not.
You cannot change the English language to suit your prejudices.
1a. An immigrant, by definition, is “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence”. The legality of that move, in either country, is irrelevant.
1b. To invade is “to enter for conquest or plunder”. That does not describe any of the illegal immigrants in the USA.
2. “Higher”? You’ve just discredited anything you have to say. Few if any employers knowingly hire illegal immmigrants; they ask for ID, but it’s not their responsibility to spend time and money investigating the validity of whatever ID they are shown. Why should it be?
To point #2, isn’t it against the law to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant, much like it is against the law to knowingly sell a firearm to a prohibited person? I know the government has a program to help employers check immigration status quickly (the name escapes me at the moment). I also know that the use of this program is not mandatory.
Would it be that much of a stretch to make a check with such a system a requirement for doing business in the state?
Once again, the key word is “knowingly”. As I just explained, few if any employers knowingly hire illegal immigrants. They may suspect, but they don’t know. Because they’re not idiots, they know that among all their employees there must be many illegal ones, but they don’t know which ones, and they don’t want to know, and it’s not their job to find out. They ask for ID, but it’s not their job to question its validity; they’re not expected to be experts in spotting forged or invalid documents. (The term “undocumented immigrant” is not just PC crap, it’s outright untrue. Most illegal immigrants have documents — sometimes more than one set.)
Making E-VERIFY mandatory might help, but it’s got its own problems. The rate of false negatives makes it not very useful.