Whitman's woes raise questions on illegal hiring
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Republican Meg Whitman has forcefully denied that she knew her former housekeeper was in the country illegally, keeping immigration in the spotlight in California's gubernatorial race.
Q: What are people required to do to verify the immigration status of household workers, such as cleaners, gardeners, painters and carpenters?
A: In general, employers must fill out and sign the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' I-9 form, which requires them to acknowledge, under penalty of perjury, that they examined documents that entitle an employee to work. However, the form is not required for "casual domestic work in a private home on a sporadic, irregular or intermittent basis," according to CIS' employers guide.
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Dan Kowalski, editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin, said "sporadic" work has not been clearly defined by case law, making it open to interpretation. A full-time nanny's employer, he says, would be required to fill out an I-9 form.
Independent contractors are also exempt. Kowalski says the term "independent contractor" is well-defined by case law; the person hired to paint a living room is not required to fill out an I-9.
Q: Is an employer shielded from legal trouble if the worker is contracted by an agency?
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A: Yes. But Kowalski says that means the employment agency pays the worker. If Whitman paid the worker directly, she became the employer and should have signed the I-9 form, he says.
Q: What if the employer suspects a worker is using false documents or someone else's documents?
A: CIS says an employer must reject documents that "do not reasonably on their face appear to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them." It sponsors a voluntary program that lets employers run a worker's information against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security databases. More than 216,000 employers were enrolled in the E-Verify program through September 2009.
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I-9 forms are not submitted to the government, but an employer must keep them for three years after the hiring date or a year after the date of termination, whichever is later.
For more information, see CIS' employers guide, http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/m-274.pdf