Home : Immigrants' Rights : Workplace Rights

The IRP works to ensure that federal employment, labor and anti-discrimination laws provide meaningful protection to non-citizens, legal residents and Americans alike. Any person perceived to be foreign born is highly vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation and abuse in the workplace.

Immigrant workers, who often lack knowledge of U.S. labor laws and are afraid to assert their legal rights as employees, are commonly exploited by employers who refuse to pay them minimum wage or over-time.

But not only immigrants suffer as a result of bad immigration measures. Since 1986, immigration laws have required employers to verify the identity of all new employees and to document their eligibility to work in the U.S. Most of these laws require employers to use E-Verify - a flawed and experimental Social Security Administration database. The use of such an error-ridden database leads to problems for lawful workers who must persuade multiple bureaucracies to fix their records if they want to keep their jobs.

Rather than run the risk of suffering the employer sanctions laws' penalties, many employers would simply rather not hire individuals they perceive as foreign born. As a result, there has been widespread employment discrimination against U.S. citizens and other legal residents.

How Do Labor Laws Apply to Immigrants? >>

DHS Head Napolitano To Testify Wednesday In Congress For First Time (02/24/2009)
WASHINGTON – Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the House Homeland Security Committee as part of the hearing titled, “DHS: The Path Forward.” The American Civil Liberties Union calls on the committee to inquire into the secretary’s views on key DHS policies, where the balance between security and civil liberties was often skewed under the Bush administration. Employment verification (E-Verify) and Real ID are both areas that need thorough revamping in order to respect the constitutional rights of all Americans.

ACLU And U.S. Chamber Support Stripping Basic Pilot Provision From Stimulus Plan (02/11/2009)
WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union and the United States Chamber of Commerce today joined together to urge the conferees of the stimulus legislation to strip a provision that would require businesses to use an experimental and flawed employment verification system to hire workers. Both groups warned that the new mandate would lead to major layoffs and delays in hiring workers.

ACLU Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trafficking Of Indian Guestworkers (11/17/2008)
NEW ORLEANS - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that workers brought to the United States from India to work in shipyards after Hurricane Katrina were misleadingly recruited, exploited and mistreated. The ACLU and the law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP joined a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of over 500 guestworkers charging the workers were trafficked into the U.S. through the federal government's H-2B guestworker program with dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices and threats of serious harm upon their arrival.

Problematic E-Verify Program Expanded to Include All Federal Contractors (11/14/2008)
WASHINGTON - Today, President Bush issued a final rule requiring all federal contractors to use E-Verify, a flawed governmental system to check the citizenship status of the workforce, as a condition of doing business with the federal government. This rule would also require re-verification of some current federal contracts. This unprecedented expansion will require the compliance of millions of governmental contractors, for which the systemic infrastructure simply does not exist.

Civil Rights Coalition Charges That Finalized "No Match" Rule Will Hurt American Workers And Economy (10/23/2008)
WASHINGTON – The "no match" rule reissued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today will put the livelihoods of authorized workers – including U.S. citizens – at risk, have a devastating impact on the already suffering U.S. economy and lead to widespread discrimination in the workforce, according to a coalition of civil rights organizations.

Department of Homeland Security Republished No Match Rule (10/23/2008)

Chicanos Por La Causa, Inc. et al. v. Napolitano et al. - Opinion (09/17/2008)

Complaint in Lopez, et al vs. Town of Cave Creek, et. al. (03/25/2008)

Chicanos por la Causa v. Napolitano and Valle del Sol vs. Goddard - Order (02/28/2008)

Valle del Sol v. Goddard - Complaint (12/12/2007)

ACLU Testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law (06/10/2008)
Chairwoman Lofgren, Ranking Member King and Subcommittee Members, on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”), America’s oldest and largest civil liberties organization, and its more than half a million members and 53 affiliates across the country, we are pleased to submit this testimony. The ACLU writes to oppose any legislative proposal that would impose a mandatory, electronic employment eligibility verification pre-screening system on America’s workforce. Under any name, the original Basic Pilot Employment Verification System (also known as E-Verify, hereinafter “Basic Pilot”) or another mandatory employment eligibility prescreening system would impose unacceptable burdens on America’s workers, businesses and society at large without resolving America’s undocumented immigration dilemma. The costs associated with this program cannot be denied and cannot be overstated; any benefits are speculative, at best.

ACLU and ACLU-NC Comments on Proposed No-Match Rule (04/24/2008)

ACLU Backgrounder on English Only Policies in Congress (12/10/2007)
In 2006 the Senate took up an amendment to make English the national language in connection with the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (“CIR”) Act. The amendment, offered by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), passed the Senate by a vote of 62 to 35. This amendment was substantially diluted by the subsequent passage of an alternative amendment by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) which declared English as the “common and unifying language of the United States.” Both amendments, largely symbolic in nature, died when the Senate failed to pass CIR. Similar amendments were introduced and passed in the 2007 version of the CIR, which also failed to become law. Nonetheless, the fact that nearly two-thirds of the Senate voted to make English the national language illustrates the intense, and unfortunately misguided, fervor surrounding the English-only debate.

Coalition Sign-On Letter to the Senate Urging Opposition of Expansion of the Basic Pilot Employment Verification System (03/27/2006)

Government "manual" distributed to Iowa defense lawyers (07/31/2008)
Government "manual" distributed to defense lawyers assigned to represent immigrant workers arrested and prosecuted in the May 2008 Postville, Iowa meat packing raids.

National and Regional Organizations Opposed to the No-Match Rule (04/25/2008)

AFL-CIO v. Chertoff - Safe-Harbor Procedures for Employers Who Receive a No-Match Letter: (03/21/2008)

Plaintiffs in AFL-CIO v. Chertoff (09/28/2007)

How Do Labor Laws Apply to Immigrants? (01/29/2009)

What's Wrong With E-Verify? (06/20/2008)

Employee Verification Leave Behind (06/20/2008)
Proposals are making their way through Congress that would dramatically expand the government’s flawed “E-Verify” program – ensuring that millions of Americans will be barred from working. If passed, every employer in the United States will be required to verify the eligibility to work of every current and prospective employee, including U.S. citizens.

Employee Verification Background (06/20/2008)
Proposals are making their way through Congress, including the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088), that would dramatically expand the government’s flawed “E-Verify” program – ensuring that millions of Americans will be barred from working. If passed, every employer in the United States will be required to verify the eligibility to work of every current and prospective employee, including U.S. citizens.

AFL-CIO v. Chertoff (08/29/2007)
AFL-CIO, ACLU and National Immigration Law Center Challenge New Homeland Security Rule