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President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to launch mass deportations of unauthorized workers as soon as he takes office in January.
This has raised concerns for industries, including construction, that rely on foreign-born employees to deliver projects. The Pew Research Center estimates that 26% of construction workers are immigrants and 13% of the people employed in construction are not authorized to work in the US
But even for companies that employ only documented workers, questions abound, as those who are authorized to work in the U.S. can also be subject to scrutiny, experts say.
“I think of all my clients, I think our construction clients are the most concerned,” said Shanon Stevenson, a partner at the Atlanta-based law firm Fisher & Phillips. “It worries about losing a large number of its workforce.”
Although the details of how mass deportations might occur remain murky, and the cases do obstruct immigration courtsAxios reported, bogging down what is already a slow process: construction leaders can take action now to protect their companies and their licensed workers before January 20.
Internal checks
Stevenson said many companies have begun conducting internal I-9 audits. The form confirms an individual’s eligibility to work in the US and must be completed within three days of hiring an employee.
For some contractors, this information is not necessarily shared among all managers, so some company leaders or supervisors may not know the status of their entire workforce.
“I think a lot of times companies may not even be aware of what their undocumented population is,” Stevenson said. “There’s maybe one or two people who are responsible for doing the I-9s and they’re usually like a lower-level HR person.”
A perform an internal auditThe Society for Human Resource Management suggests employers:
- Gather all I-9 forms in the file.
- Obtain an I-9 for employees who do not currently have one.
- Audit existing I-9s for errors and correct them. Smaller errors may require corrections to the existing form, but major ones may require a new form to be issued.
- Review the I-9 forms of terminated employees to make sure that the forms the employer is required to keep by law are correct.
Forms I-9 are one method of ensuring eligibility to work, but they are not exhaustive. For example, employers don’t have to keep copies of identifying information used on an I-9, so if something like a Social Security card is forged, the employer doesn’t keep a copy of the fraudulent document.
In addition to I-9, 23 states now require some use of the federal government’s E-Verify programaccording to credit agency Experian, although the exact nature of the rules varies. For example, some states only require E-Verify, a more thorough method of proving worker eligibility, for public employees or only for businesses with a large number of full-time employees.
Other considerations
Marisa Diaz, director of the Immigrant Worker Justice Program at the New York City-based National Employment Law Project, has seen a significant increase in internal I-9 audits. But employers need to be careful, he said, because it can be harmful for workers to check and recheck.
“It’s also extremely harmful to workers, whether they’re authorized or not,” Diaz told Construction Dive. “We see workers who are authorized to work, but are also sometimes terminated as a result of complicated audits and re-verifying their information.”
At the same time, Diaz said, companies may need to consider avoiding reverification. Doing it simply to get Trump into office could be construed as discrimination against workers.
Diaz said he is aware of the “increased fear” for workers, whether they are authorized to work or not. This is largely due to the anti-immigration rhetoric directed at those of Latin American and South American descent.
The impact of national attention on the state of labor has broader impacts, including for day-to-day performance at work, he said.
“This has detrimental effects in the workplace in terms of workers’ ability to identify workplace hazards, feel safe to speak up and let their employers know if something is not just affecting them , but also to all his co-workers,” Diaz said.
