Yup, you read that right. On October 26, 1999 the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that it would begin prosecuting any employer who:
‘‘...is found to have discriminated against unauthorized workers in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the Equal Pay Act (EPA). ...The Commission now concludes that unauthorized workers who are subjected to unlawful employment discrimination are entitled to the same relief as other victims of discrimination, subject to certain narrow exceptions which are discussed below.’’The acts mentioned above refer to discriminating against an employee in hiring and firing practices, as well as on the job treatment based upon him/her having a disability, being elderly, or working for less pay than is equal to the normal rate for a particular job, and other factors. In the same announcement, the EEOC stated that an illegal alien employee may be awarded back pay and ‘‘compensatory and punitive damages’’ and ‘‘Attorneys' fees and costs’’ for discrimination on the job, or for being fired from a job for discriminatory reasons. Unbelievably, the employer may also be required to re-hire the illegal immigrant! In this case the EEOC says that the employer is required to re-hire the illegal immigrant ‘‘unless the employer knows that the worker is unauthorized, in which case the worker's eligibility for reinstatement depends on being able to satisfy IRCA's verification requirements within a reasonable time.’’
What about refusal to hire an illegal immigrant for discriminatory reasons in the first place? The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) made it illegal for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant, but this new ruling by the EEOC would appear to require an employer to break the law by forcing him to hire illegal immigrants (which is itself a crime) or be charged with discrimination. That would make an interesting court case. The EEOC claims their position is supported by a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Sure-Tan v. NLRB, 467 U.S. 883 (1984), in which the court found that because the employer in Sure-Tan retaliatorily reported five employees to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the employer was in violation of the National Labor Relations Act against discrimination. In other words, the employer violated the law by reporting his employees illegal employment to the Immigration and Naturalization Service! A Press Release is available.
In 1997, Proposition 187 was passed in California. It would have denied taxpayer funded benefits to illegal immigrants. Even though it was endorsed by a clear majority of California voters, federal District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer struck down most of Proposition 187 before it became law. Although Pacific Legal Foundation tried to force the government to uphold the proposition, this appears to be yet another of the many instances in which the federal government has overruled state law. State laws legalizing the Medical use of marijuana have been passed in Alaska, Arizona, California, Washington state, Nevada, Oregon, and the District of Columbia. In all cases, federal officials have vowed to ignore the state laws. In Washington DC, even though 69% of the people voted in favor of the legalization initiative, congress passed a bill preventing local or federal money from being spent to ‘‘enact or carry out’’ the initiative. This country is no longer a Democracy, and it is certainly not the Republic our forefathers created. Whose country is it anyway!?
| ‘‘When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.’’ |
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— Thomas Jefferson to C. Hammond, 1821. |