ImmigrationCourts largely ignore immigration status in lawsuits: study

When a person living in the United States without legal permission or suspected of doing so is involved in a work-related lawsuit, most courts disregard their immigration status when determining remedies, says a study from a University of Illinois expert in labor relations.

According to research from Michael LeRoy, a professor of law and of labor and employment relations at Illinois, by mostly ignoring the immigration status of workers who file suit against former employers, lower courts are essentially refusing to view the complaint as an occasion to enforce immigration laws.

“In a ruling from 2002, the Supreme Court invited lower courts to bifurcate remedies, so that unlawful aliens would receive little or no legal protection,” LeRoy said. “But for the most part, lower courts have declined to view the filing of a complaint as an occasion to enforce immigration laws. Instead, they have invoked basic remedial principles, such as restitution and prevention of unjust enrichment.”

A University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign release reports that LeRoy compares the actions of the lower courts as similar to honoring the biblical injunction from the Book of Exodus — “One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you” — of applying laws uniformly to “natives” and “strangers.”

“If you substitute ‘citizen’ for ‘native’ and ‘alien’ for ‘stranger’ — and bear in mind that nearly 11 million people unlawfully reside in the midst of 285 million birthright citizens — well, the conditions may differ in time and location, but not in the greater context of inequality between the native and the stranger,” he said. “In essence, the lower courts are saying that when we as a nation treat immigrants who reside unlawfully in their midst as outcasts, we devalue our laws and debase the welfare of our fellow citizens.

“While most lower courts in the study did not delve deeply into the ethical implications of the Supreme Court decision, they did arrive at that moral.”

The study, which covers a 10-year period from 2002 to 2012, analyzes federal and state work-related litigation that cites the case Hoffman Plastic Compounds Inc. v. the National Labor Relations Board, including those that relied on its precedent or considered remedies involving a known or suspected illegal immigrant.

The release notes that the research found that depending on the type of complaint, plaintiffs won between 60 and 77.5 percent of the time.

This study also discovered high win-rates for