10/30/08 Latest on No-Match

Latest on No-Match. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A district court judge in California put the kibosh on the No-Match rule after the ACLU and other plaintiffs filed suit asking that the rule be invalidated, and the judge issued a temporary injunction restraining DHS from moving forward with the rule. Now that rule has been re-written according to Washington State Farm Bureau's, Dan Fazio. FAZIO: What the rule says is that when you get information through a no-match letter from the Social Security Administration or another similar no-match letter from the Department of Homeland Security that you have to take certain steps to verify if in fact the employee is legally present. And if you can't verify that then you have to terminate the employee. Fazio says there are a number of big problem with the rule. FAZIO: The problem for seasonal employers is that many times when they get this no-match letter, the worker is no longer there. So how do you take those steps which involve interviewing the worker and giving them the chance to explain their situation if the worker is not there? Now the rule says that is the worker is no longer working for you, you don't have to do anything. The problem is what happens if the person comes back the next year? Then the question is does the employer have to keep a database each year in case a worker comes back the following year. FAZIO: The agency would still have to prove that you knowingly hired or you knowingly continued to employ a person that was not legally present. So no one knows how to do it but the problem for seasonal employer is they wouldn't have benefit of this Safe Harbor Rule. See what the Safe Harbor Rule does is it gives employers a safe harbor in that if you follow these steps, even if it subsequently turns out that the worker is not legally present then employer is in the safe harbor. Now that the Department of Homeland Security has released its revised rule it will still have to go back to court to see if the judge will lift the injunction. FAZIO: The bottom line is that the government is trying to make employers their border agency. They're trying to hoist on more bureaucratic rules for employers before, after or during the time when they're supposed to be hiring workers and it's because we don't have a National ID system. If you'd like more information on this topic, visit any of your local Farm Bureau web sites or the Department of Homeland Securities web site. We'll keep you updated. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.