For employers whose workforce includes non-citizen employees, coordination — or the lack of it — between federal labor and immigration authorities carries direct compliance implications.
A recent shift in that coordination is raising new questions across labor-intensive industries such as hospitality, retail, and health care.
KQED reported that the U.S. Department of Labor has ended a longstanding interagency agreement with immigration authorities that, since 2011, had generally kept ICE enforcement separate from active wage and hour investigations. The agreement was designed to encourage workers — including those without permanent legal status — to report wage violations without fear that doing so would expose them to immigration consequences.
Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm at Epstein Becker Green and former head of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, told KQED that the change was not unexpected given the current administration's enforcement priorities:
“Given the current administration’s heavy emphasis on immigration enforcement, I think that the MOU was seen in some respects as holding back a bit on immigration enforcement. The writing was on the wall,”
DeCamp went on to explain the underlying tension between the two enforcement regimes, and what he sees as the practical tradeoff employers and workers now face:
“The immigration laws are, in some respects, in tension with the labor laws in terms of how they play out for the workers. It is difficult to enforce one vigorously without causing some damage on the other front,” he said. “What we see now is a prioritization that emphasizes immigration enforcement, even if that does come at some increased risk with respect to the wage and hour enforcement.”
Get in Touch
To discuss how this shift in federal enforcement coordination may affect your organization's wage and hour compliance strategy for a workforce that includes non-citizen employees, contact Paul DeCamp at PDeCamp@ebglaw.com.
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Board of Directors / Member of the Firm