With the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, employers in the U.S. are required to hire only authorized workers. Employers are required to document their employees’ identity and work eligibility on the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, within three days of hire. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (U.S. ICE) is responsible for enforcing the nation’s immigration laws relating to unauthorized workers gaining unlawful employment.
Employers must also ensure that they do not treat workers differently in the hiring and firing processes because a worker is or is not a U.S. citizen, because of a worker’s particular immigration status, or because of where a worker is from or appears to be from. The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices investigates and prosecutes such claims.
U.S. ICE has developed the ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers (IMAGE) program in order to assist employers in developing policies to ensure that authorized workers will be hired in a non-discriminatory manner. As part of the IMAGE outreach program, a Special Agent with U.S. ICE will provide attendees with an overview of the four types of immigration-related discriminatory conduct – Citizenship/Immigration Status Discrimination, National Origin Discrimination, Document Abuse Discrimination, and Retaliation/Intimidation. Emphasis will be placed upon avoiding discriminatory conduct during the Form I-9 and E-Verify processes.
Special Agent Joseph (Chip) Black, with the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (U.S. ICE), began his federal law enforcement career in 1995. Special Agent Black has been involved in a variety of criminal investigations, including fraudulent identity creation, identity theft, fraudulent identity document vending, and alien smuggling. He is currently serving as the North Texas and Oklahoma coordinator for HSI’s IMAGE (ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers) program.