Overzealous status checks can lead to claims of bias. The job applicant said that he was a U.S. citizen and showed a drivers license to prove it. The man came back with a certificate showing that he was a naturalized citizen. But the clerk said that all five available openings had been filled. To lawyers who defend employers from sanctions under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, updated as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the Aztec fine points up its damned if you do, damned if you dont aspect.
Independent observers tend to agree.
Michael Fix is a lawyer and analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute who has tracked the law from the start. IRCA was the largest regulatory expansion against employers since OSHA, he says, referring to the workplace protections passed a generation ago. But IRCA passed in the teeth of the anti-regulatory Reagan administration, and so it reflects all the ambiguities you might expect. Sanctions against hiring illegal aliens arent like, say, sanctions against polluting water. No employer is going to get in trouble because they made the water too clean.