The Story of ‘Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB’: Labor Rights Without Remedies for Undocumented Immigrants

In Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002), the United States Supreme Court held that undocumented workers are not entitled to remedies for violations of their rights to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act. The majority of the Court viewed enforcement of immigration policy prohibiting employment of undocumented workers as more important than protecting the labor rights of both undocumented workers and their U.S. citizen co-workers who join their efforts to improve working conditions. The chapter explores the origins of the case in a minimum-wage factory in Los Angeles, the surprising turn of events when the illegally fired worker blurted out on the witness stand that he was not a U.S. citizen, how the lawyer for the employer portrayed his client as being unaware of the worker\u27s undocumented status when the employee he had stated on the job application that he was not authorized to work in the U.S., and the closely-divided decisions at every level of judicial review in which judges disagreed strenuously how to reconcile immigration and labor policy. The chapter also explores the impact of the case on a wide variety of state and federal employment cases in which employers have argued that undocumented workers are unprotected by law

PROPORTIONALITY: THE STRUGGLE FOR BALANCE IN U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY†

In September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus dispatched Arkansas National Guard troops to prevent black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Eisenhower Administration responded by sending Justice Department lawyers to enter school desegregation litigation brought by the NAACP that was already pending before the U.S. District Court in Arkansas. The court granted the preliminary injunction sought by the Justice Department and the NAACP, holding that federal law preempted state interference with school integration. A few weeks later, in the face of local resistance edged with hatred and violence, President Eisenhower ordered the famous 101st Airborne to Arkansas to maintain order and safeguard the black school children. The court\u27s injunction was upheld on appeal, and Central High was eventually desegregated. The most important legacy of the conflict, however, may have been the images from the streets of Little Rock–striking photographs of tense black students, sturdy federal troops, and a surging, spitting crowd of white protesters

State and Local Police Enforcement of Immigration Laws

Federal law enforcement agencies responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001, with forceful initiatives directed at noncitizens and their communities. Several of these measures raise grave civil rights concerns. Quite apart from investigations prompted by individualized leads, officials have singled out Arab, Muslim, and South Asian immigrants for voluntary interviews, fingerprint registration, arrest, and deportation, based merely on these individuals\u27 membership in certain racial, ethnic, religious, or gender groups. Federal officials have subjected many arrestees to secret or prolonged detention, without access to counsel, witnesses, or family members, sometimes without charge or for extended periods beyond the conclusion of deportation proceedings

Emerging Issues for Undocumented Workers

Immigrant families and their commumtIes have experienced extraordinary pressures since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A number of law enforcement initiatives have targeted Arab and Muslim immigrants in particular, but many others, such as the efforts by the current Administration to enlist state and local police in the routine enforcement of immigration laws, have swept more broadly. A weak economy has left many employees, especially vulnerable low-wage immigrant workers, unable to resist employer demands for lower pay, longer hours, and other reductions in the terms and conditions of employment. The erosion of the social safety net for non-citizens, occasioned by 1996 reforms to the federal welfare statutes and the subsequent state and local implementation of these changes, have greatly restricted access to public benefits for even legal immigrants, leaving little to fall back on should an immigrant wage-earner lose her job. The prospect of a broad amnesty for undocumented immigrants in the United States, however, remains remote

Immigration Law and the Proportionality Requirement

Proportionality is the notion that the severity of a sanction should not be excessive in relation to the gravity of an offense. The principle is ancient and nearly uncontestable, and its vitality is well established in numerous areas of criminal and civil law, in the United States and abroad. Doctrinal and theoretical debates concerning proportionality review of criminal sentences, civil punitive damages awards, and other sanctions tend to focus on four distinct questions: the justification for taking account of proportionality, which sanctions are sufficiently punitive to require review, which of those are so disproportionate as to be impermissible, and whether a court or legislature should decide the maximum punishment the state may impose

Introduction -- The Border Crossed Us: Current Issues in Immigrant Labor

A group of unionized Latino, Chinese, and Polish workers in a Manhattan garment factory complain to the factory owner about his failure to pay overtime as required by law, and some workers file administrative complaints with the New York Department of Labor. In retaliation, the owner fires the workers who filed complaints. When the union grieves the discharges and the Department of Labor notifies the factory owner of his overtime liability, the owner casts about for another strategy to punish his workers and, hopefully, evade his overtime obligations. Choosing a familiar path, the owner caBs the Immigration and Naturalization Service ( INS ) to request a raid of his own factory. INS obliges, arresting nearly thirty workers, and declines to fine the factory owner in light of his cooperation on the raid. But this story has an unusual ending: the Immigration Judge hearing the resulting deportation cases dismissed them, on the grounds that the INS had violated its own internal rules restricting worksite raids in the middle of a labor dispute, and the New York Department of Labor successfully prosecuted the factory owner for violating its anti-retaliation statute by calling the INS to punish his workers