Golf course operators who feared they may be tangled in trap of red tape upon potentially receiving social security “no-match” letters after the Department of Homeland Security announced its new immigration enforcement measures can breathe a sigh of relief, even if it’s just a temporary one.
In response to a suit filed by the AFL-CIO, the ACLU and other labor groups, a federal judge issued an order temporarily blocking the government from implementing the new DHS measures that rely on error-prone Social Security Administration records as a tool for immigration enforcement.
The judge’s ruling also stopped the SSA from sending out no-match letters to an estimated 140,000 employers on Sept. 14. A formal court hearing on the permanent suspension of the DHS rules is set to take place Oct. 1.
Some groups are likely hoping that challenging DHS's new rules will delay enforcement until comprehensive immigration reform legislation is back on the table, Delaney said. However, he doesn't think the stoppage will last that long. "We're able to buy some time, but eventually the government is still going to be able to issue their no-match letters," he said.
The new rule makes the employer liable for failing to respond to no-match letters, although it’s common for discrepancies to occur because of innocent factors like typographical errors, name changes due to marriage or divorce and the use of multiple surnames, according to the ACLU. In fact, according to the Office of the Inspector General in SSA, 12.7 million of the 17.8 million discrepancies in SSA’s database – more than 70 percent – belong to native-born
“This is a crucial and significant first step in challenging this rule, which would be a bureaucratic and costly nightmare for employers and many
Related link
Read the complaint: AFL-CIO v. Chertoff
