OTHER LAWSUITS
In April, the world’s biggest floorcovering company, Mohawk Industries, agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by former employees who charged that the company hired illegal workers by failing to adequately document their citizenship. Mohawk denied the allegations but will pay $18 million to settle the 6-year-old lawsuit.
Robert Divine, an immigration lawyer in Chattanooga, said Garland and other carpet makers are wary after Mohawk’s experience about not doing enough to screen potential illegal immigrants.
“It’s always been a Catch-22 for employers,” Mr. Divine said. They have to ask for enough documentation so they won’t be fined for failing to confirm employment eligibility. But then they risk suits for discrimination, said Mr. Divine, who previously was chief counsel for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“The Obama administration has been much more active in enforcing the immigration law’s anti-discrimination provisions than the Bush administration,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law scholar at Cornell University, told The Wall Street Journal last week.
The Justice Department is boosting its staff of immigration-related hiring discrimination investigators by 25 percent this year, the Journal reported