From News Dispaches

LOS ANGELES, CA: A federal appeals court on June 23 upheld the constitutionality of sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens but the court said “troubling” questions remain about how to enforce the law.

In the first appellate court review of the 1986 immigration reform law’s employer penalty provisions, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a general constitutional challenge to the statue and also upheld many of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s procedures for enforcing it.

Fined For 6 Violations However, in a case involving an El Cajon furniture plant, which hired several illegal aliens, the court raised questions about how quickly companies must fire an employee once employers are notified that the worker is not in the country legally.

In this case, Mester Manufacturing Co. was fined $3,000 for six violations one of which was the company’s continued employment of a worker, Miquel CastelGarcia, for two weeks after receiving notice from the INS that he was not authorized to work in the United States.

The citation “raises a troubling question,” said Judge Robert R. Beezer, writing for the three judge panel. “When must an employer terminate an employee upon learning that he or she is unauthorized to work in the United States … Was Mester required to fire Castel Garcia the very day it received the Citation? Or should the company have been allowed a reasonable period of time in which to allow Castel Garcia to wind up his employment? The statue does not answer these questions.”

As written, the court said, the statue would allow the INS to notify a company at 11:55 am that one of its employees was unauthorized and seek sanctions five minutes later.

Moreover, since the INS has expressed a desire to proceed on a case by case basis, it will be up to the court to work through such issues in future litigation unless new laws or regulations are passed to deal with the uncertainty, Beezer said, joined by Judges Cecil F. Poole and Stephen S. Trott.

In this case the court deferred to the previous decision of an administrative law judge, who had held that a fine for the two week delay in firing Castel Garcia was warranted.

The court rejected Mester’s argument that the immigration reform law is unconstitutional because it was presented to the President for signature after Congress adjoined.

Article extracted from this publication >>  June 30, 1989