Social Security Mismatch Wasn't Grounds To Fire
Recent Cases
Thirty-three janitors at the Los Angeles Lakers' arena were wrongfully fired for not responding quickly enough to a request to provide a correct Social Security number, the 9th Circuit ruled.
Aramark Facilities Services received a "no-match" letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA) stating that information for 48 of its workers at the Staples Center did not match the numbers in the SSA database.
This caused Aramark to suspect that the janitors were in the United States illegally.
Aramark gave the employees three days to begin the process of getting a new Social Security card. Fifteen employees complied, and the other 33 were fired a week later.
The Service Employees International Union filed a grievance, and an arbitrator gave the employees their jobs back, along with back pay. The district court overturned the ruling, stating it violated public policy on immigration.
Judge Hall reversed the district court ruling.
"This case boils down to a single issue: whether the SSA's no-match letter - and the fired employees' responses - put Aramark on constructive notice that it was employing undocumented workers," Hall wrote.
But the government agency failed to do so in the Aramark case, the court ruled, as constructive notice required positive proof of a workers' undocumented status.
"The employees' failure to meet the deadline," Hall said, "is simply not probative enough of their immigration status to indicate that public policy would be violated if they were reinstated and given back pay."
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.