Posted Monday, March 30th, 2009 by HLPRonline editorial staff
Building on a Broken Employer Sanctions System: The Impact of the Bush Administration’s SSA No-Match Letter Proposal
by KIMBERLY FOX
In August 2007, approximately one year after Congress’s failed attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took action. Declaring that “until Congress chooses to act, we’re going to take some energetic steps of our own,” DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff introduced the Bush Administration’s twenty-six policy proposals aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. This Essay focuses on the “linchpin” of the Bush Administration’s plan, a revamped Social Security Administration (SSA) no-match letter scheme, a policy that “seem[s] to dominate most public discussions on immigration.” This Essay offers analysis of the Final Supplemental Rule, reissued on October 23, 2008.
No-match letters have long informed employers that their employees’ wage and earning reports, in the form of W-2 tax forms, do not match official SSA records. Sometimes these letters result from an employee’s inclusion of fraudulent personal information on his or her tax forms. In such a case, if an employer had “knowledge” of a worker’s unlawful status and hired or employed said worker, employer sanctions result under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA).
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