Opinion ID: 72032
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

Text: Undeterred, Bollinger insists that we must not end our analysis with either the statutory text of the LHWCA or our precedential decisions on this issue, but that we must now interpret the LHWCA in light of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (the IRCA), a comprehensive scheme prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens in the United States. [27] According to Bollinger, regardless whether the statutory text of the LHWCA or our precedent supports an award of benefits to Rodriguez, such an award would undermine the immigration policies expressed by Congress in the IRCA. Although we agree with Bollinger's basic premise that a thorough review of the IRCA is prudent, we disagree that the BRB's ruling in any way undermines the congressional policies embedded in the IRCA. In enacting the IRCA, Congress forcefully made combating the employment of illegal aliens central to the policy of immigration law. [28] Congress thus focused foremost on the employer. [29] Under the IRCA, employers must verify the identity and eligibility of all new hires by examining specified documents before each employee begins work. [30] If a prospective new hire is unable to produce the required documentation, the employer may not hire the individual. [31] Employers that violate the IRCA are punished by civil fines and may be subject to criminal prosecution. [32] The IRCA does make it a crime for an undocumented immigrant to subvert this employer-verification system by tendering false or fraudulent documents for purposes of obtaining employment in the United States. [33] Specifically, the IRCA subjects any individual who uses or attempts to use such documents to fines and criminal prosecution, providing nothing regarding civil effects. [34] More to the point, the parties do not dispute that Rodriguez violated the IRCA when he proffered a false Social Security number to obtain employment with Bollinger. Rather, the question is whether that violation precludes his eligibility to receive workers' compensation benefits under the LHWCA. To answer this question, we must consider it in the framework of the Supreme Court's decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB , the most recent in a line of cases reviewing backpay-reinstatement orders by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that are in tension with other federal laws. [35] The line of cases of which Hoffman is the most recent can be traced back to Southern S.S. Co. v. NLRB, in which the World War II-era Court reviewed an NLRB order reinstating several seamen who had engaged in a labor strike while their vessel was midway through its voyage. [36] In Southern S.S., the Court concluded that the seamen had committed mutiny in direct violation of the criminal code. [37] As the Court explained, [t]he difficulty with the [NLRB's reinstatement order] is that it ignores the plain Congressional mandate that a rebellion by seamen against their officers on board a vessel anywhere within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States is to be punished as a mutiny. If this mandate is to be changed, it must be changed by Congress and not by the Courts .... The Board has not been commissioned to effectuate the policies of the Labor Relations Act so single-mindedly that it may wholly ignore other and equally important Congressional objectives. Frequently the entire scope of Congressional purpose calls for careful accommodation of one statutory scheme to another, and it is not too much to demand of an administrative body that it undertake this accommodation without excessive emphasis on its immediate task. [38] In the next decision in the Hoffman line of cases, Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, the Court reviewed an NLRB order providing undocumented workers with backpay for their employer's labor-law violation. [39] In Sure-Tan, several undocumented workers had elected to form a union, and their employer retaliated by reporting them to authorities as undocumented immigrants and having them deported. [40] The issue before the Court was whether, assuming the employer had committed a labor violation, the undocumented employees were eligible for backpay for the period during which they had been deported. [41] The Court began its analysis by confirming that undocumented immigrants are employees within the intendment of the NLRA and are thus entitled to its protections. [42] As the Court also explained, however, [i]n devising remedies for unfair labor practices, the [NLRB] is obliged to take into account another equally important Congressional objectiveto wit, the objective of deterring unauthorized immigration that is embodied in the [Immigration and Nationality Act (`INA')]. [43] Concluding that the backpay award would have undermined the immigration policies expressed by Congress in the INA, the Court vacated the NLRB's order. [44] Although acknowledging [t]he probable unavailability of the [NLRA's] more effective remedies in light of the practical workings of the immigration laws, the Court explained that [a]ny perceived deficiencies in the NLRA's existing remedial arsenal can only be addressed by congressional action. [45] The most recent decision in this line of cases is Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB , in which the Court held that federal immigration policy, as expressed by Congress in the IRCA, precluded the NLRB from awarding backpay to an undocumented immigrant who had never been legally authorized to work in the United States. [46] As in Sure-Tan, the employer in Hoffman had fired an employee for attempting to organize a uniona clear violation of the NLRA. [47] Among other remedies, the NLRB ordered that the employer offer the employee reinstatement with backpay. [48] At a subsequent hearing before the ALJ, however, the employee testified that he was an undocumented immigrant and that he had used fraudulent documents to obtain employment. [49] Concluding that the most effective way to accommodate and further the immigration policies embodied in [the IRCA] is to provide the protections and remedies of the [NLRA] to undocumented workers in the same manner as to other employees, the NLRB ordered the employer to provide the employee with backpay from the date of his termination to the date the employer first learned of the employee's undocumented status. [50] Framing the issue before it as whether the NLRB had exceeded its discretion by awarding backpay to an illegal alien for years of work not performed, for wages that could not lawfully have been earned, and for a job obtained in the first instance by a criminal fraud, the Court in Hoffman vacated the NLRB's order. [51] The Court began its analysis by summarizing its prior decisions in Southern S.S. and Sure-Tan, explaining that those cases stand for the proposition that, where the [NLRB's] chosen remedy trenches upon a federal statute or policy outside the Board's competence to administer, the Board's remedy may be required to yield. [52] The Court then highlighted an important development in federal law that had occurred post- Sure-Tan : Congress's passage of the IRCA. [53] As the Court noted, [u]nder the IRCA regime, it is impossible for an undocumented alien to obtain employment in the United States without some party directly contravening explicit congressional policies. [54] According to the Court, the NLRB's order ran counter to policies underlying the IRCA, policies the Board has no authority to enforce or administer. [55] The Court explained: What matters here ... is that Congress has expressly made it criminally punishable for an alien to obtain employment with false documents. There is no reason to think that Congress nonetheless intended to permit backpay where but for an employer's unfair labor practices, an alien-employee would have remained in the United States illegally, and continued to work illegally, all the while successfully evading apprehension by immigration authorities .... The Board admits that had the INS detained [the employee], or had [the employee] obeyed the law and departed to Mexico, [he] would have lost his right to backpay. [The employee] thus qualifies for the Board's award only by remaining inside the United States illegally. Similarly, [the employee] cannot mitigate damages, a duty our cases require, without triggering new IRCA violations, either by tendering false documents to employers or by finding employers willing to ignore IRCA and hire illegal workers. The Board here has failed to even consider this tension. We therefore conclude that allowing the Board to award backpay to illegal aliens would unduly trench upon explicit statutory prohibitions critical to federal immigration policy, as expressed in IRCA. It would encourage the successful evasion of apprehension by immigration authorities, condone prior violations of the immigration laws, and encourage future violations. However broad the Board's discretion to fashion remedies when dealing only with the NLRA, it is not so unbounded as to authorize this sort of an award. [56] Agreeing with the Director's interpretation of the LHWCA in the instant case, we conclude that the Hoffman line of cases is distinguishable for at least three significant reasons: (1) Unlike discretionary backpay under the NLRA, workers' compensation under the LHWCA is a non-discretionary, statutory remedy; (2) unlike the NLRA, the LHWCA is a substitute for tort law, abrogating fault of either the employer or the employee; and (3) awarding death or disability benefits post hoc to an undocumented immigrant under the LHWCA does not unduly trench upon the IRCA, as Congress chose to include a provision in the LHWCA expressly authorizing the award of benefits in the same amount to nonresident aliens.
As the Court's decision in Hoffman makes clear, backpay under the NLRA is merely one of several discretionary remedies available to the NLRB in addressing labor violations. [57] In addition to backpay, the NLRB has authority to order several other traditional remedies sufficient to effectuate national labor policy regardless of whether the spur and catalyst of backpay accompanies them. [58] For example, the Court in Hoffman concluded that the NLRB's other available remedies, e.g., requiring the employer to post appropriate notices in the workplace, would have effectively promoted the goals of the NLRA without unduly trenching on the policy goals set forth in the IRCA. [59] In contrast, awarding workers' compensation benefits under the LHWCA is a non-discretionary remedy. Indeed, the plain statutory text of the LHWCA mandatorily states that compensation shall be payable under this chapter in respect of disability or death of an employee. [60] The LHWCA, unlike the NLRA, does not contain any optional or alternative remedies that could otherwise fulfill the statute's purpose.
Unlike the NLRA, but like most workers' compensation statutes, the LHWCA's remedial scheme is a substitute for the tort claims that an injured employee could otherwise bring against his employer. Indeed, the LHWCA specifies that an employer's liability under the statute is exclusive and in place of all other liability of such employer to the employee... [61] Only if the employer fails to secure payment of compensation may an eligible employee maintain an action at law or in admiralty for damages. [62] Therefore, under the quid pro quo of the LHWCA, an employee who is eligible for benefits is stripped of his right to sue at law or in admiralty in exchange for gaining a certain, but limited, recovery under a strict liability regime. [63] As the Supreme Court has explained, the LHWCA represents a compromise between the competing interests of disabled laborers and their employers. The use of a schedule of fixed benefits as an exclusive remedy in certain cases is consistent with the employees' interest in receiving a prompt and certain recovery for their industrial injuries as well as with the employers' interest in having their contingent liabilities identified as precisely and as early as possible. [64] As we have previously held in Hernandez that an undocumented immigrant employed as a longshoreman has the right to sue a vessel owner in tort for negligence, it follows that Rodriguez must have the corresponding right, viz., the right to recover workers' compensation benefits under the LHWCA. [65] Indeed, the remedy provided by the LHWCA is merely a substitute for the negligence claim that an employee could otherwise bring against his employer in tort. As one court has observed, it would not only be illogical but it would also serve no discernable purpose to accord illegal aliens the right to bring affirmative claims in tort for personal injury but deny them the right to pursue the substitutionary remedy for personal injuries sustained in the workplace. [66] In a closely analogous case, the Court of Appeals of New York held that a minor employee who had lied about his age to obtain employment could not sue his employer in tort because the employeedespite his illegal act in falsifying his age was covered by that state's workers' compensation statute, which contained an exclusivity provision protecting the employer from liability in tort. [67] This venerable holding remains unchanged and is particularly relevant today: As the Supreme Court has noted, the LHWCA was largely patterned on New York's workers' compensation statute. [68] Thus, in Mellen v. H.B. Hirsch & Sons, Inc., the D.C. Circuit looked to New York law to determine whether an illegally-employed minor working as a longshoreman could sue his employer in tort. [69] Basing its analysis largely on New York courts' interpretations of that state's workers' compensation statute, the court in Mellen held that the minor despite having subverted child labor laws to obtain employmentwas covered under the LHWCA and was thus subject to the LHWCA's exclusivity provision barring him from proceeding in tort. [70]
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, awarding benefits to an undocumented worker under the LHWCA does not appear to unduly trench upon explicit statutory prohibitions critical to federal immigration policy. [71] This is because the LHWCA expressly provides for the award of benefits to nonresident aliens. [72] In Hoffman, the Court noted as particularly troubling that the NLRB's award of backpay undermined federal immigration policy by encouragingand even rewarding continued violations of the IRCA. [73] The Court was critical of the backpay award in part because the employee in that case qualified for the award only by remaining inside the United States illegally. The Court also noted that the employee was unable to mitigate his damages as required by law without triggering new IRCA violations, either by tendering false documents to employers or by finding employers willing to ignore IRCA and hire illegal workers. [74] There is no parallel tension in the instant case, however, because LHWCA claimants are not required to mitigate their damages by working. Rather, the LHWCA provides that an employee's compensation rate may be reduced if the employer can demonstrate that the employee is physically capable of returning to work. Moreover, the LHWCA, by its express terms, does not require claimants to remain in the United States. [75] Indeed, the LHWCA specifies that nonresident aliens and aliens who are about to become nonresidents shall be entitled to compensation in the same amount as provided for residents. [76] Thus, Rodriguez's eligibility to receive benefits is in no way contingent on his continuing to violate the IRCA or evade immigration authorities. Neither is Rodriguez being rewarded for a past violation of the IRCA, as workers' compensation is not backpay, but compensation for an injury incurred. In sum, having reviewed the statutory text of the LHWCA, our precedential decision in Hernandez, and the Supreme Court's recent decision in Hoffman, we are convinced that Rodriguez is eligible to receive benefits under the LHWCA.