The policy rests on employer sanctions, requiring employers to document the immigration status of their employees on I-9 forms. Verifying the I-9s has become a major INS preoccupation, which many unions say undermines worker's rights. The INS depends on a new set of relationships with other government agencies. An agreement with the Department of Labor, for instance, requires federal inspectors looking for violations of minimum wage and overtime laws to turn over names of workers they think lack papers. In Los Angeles the INS used Labor Department information to raid garment sweatshops, and then Korean restaurants, following a campaign by the Korean Immigrant Workers Association to enforce wage and hour laws.
Many employers view the list as evidence that workers have no legal immigration status.
That has provided another pretext for firings, especially during organizing drives. The AFL-CIO's former support for employer sanctions reflected the federation's business union policies of the Cold War. It enforced a defacto color line, seeking to protect wages for native-born workers by excluding immigrants rather than by organizing everyone. That position represented one of two opposing trends in U.S. unions. At the turn of the century, the Industrial Workers of the World actively organized immigrants, many of whom became its leaders.