Yes, there is a legal scheme in place: you're not allowed to validate the authenticity of provided documentation as a company. If someone is undocumented, they can forge documents and that's completely allowed.
The reason we have this loophole is because many industries, particularly in the South, rely directly on immigrant labor. The republicans cannot risk alienating their consistency or further hurting the already brittle economy of Red states. That's why we get a constant flow of completely ineffective and performative solutions, like ICE.
Just start locking up executives who have employees that are undocumented, and the problem would disappear before your very eyes. But, building a wall is easier, and you can see a wall.
> The reason we have this loophole is because many industries, particularly in the South, rely directly on immigrant labor. The republicans cannot risk alienating their consistency or further hurting the already brittle economy of Red states.
One example of this playing out was when the Florida state senate (Republican supermajority) shot down a bill that would have required businesses to use E-Verify to validate the authenticity of their employees' documentation. https://www.cfpublic.org/politics/2025-05-05/bill-to-expand-...
> Bill Herrle, state executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small businesses, said the bill would have made the state’s labor shortage worse and dampened productivity and entrepreneurship in the state. He said his group was relieved that it didn’t pass.
> “When I talk to small business owners now, I’m finding them busy doing a job they’d like to hire someone to do’’ Herrle said. “They’re working the line. They’re working in the kitchen. They’re working the register. And when a small business owner is doing that, guess what they’re not doing? They’re not being an entrepreneur. They’re not spending time trying to find ways to build and grow their business.’’
This is state level additional verification. It doesn't have any bearing on federal law.
I can see why they don't want to go above and beyond federal law on this, if I'm interpreting correctly. It looks like a person, not the company, can already serve 5 years if they even mistakenly hire without work authorization. What additional deterrents do you really need?
Whether that's enforced is another thing. Most probably it's not because federal attorneys are paid in peanuts so no one wants to be one unless they are doing it to be noticed by a big firm.
But, I'm not an attorney. So if you are, let us know what I've missed.
According to 8 USC 1324, it looks like what you're talking about could quickly land you in prison for up to 5 years. So, it's a scheme maybe, but not a legal one.
That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about - 8 USC 1324 is related to harboring or bringing an alien. Companies hiring people with what they believe are genuine documents, by reasonable inspection, is perfectly legal. Please note this just means you have to look at them.
The companies are doing this "unknowingly". Of course they're not stupid, they're fully aware they're hiring a lot of undocumented people. But nobody, on record, knows that. To them, all their employees have documents which appear valid. It is pretty easy to forge I-9 documents.
Part of this is because the US has incredibly poor identification infrastructure. Often, not even US citizens can be reliably identified, as seen in commercial banking. The other part is that companies cannot choose to not hire people because they think they are undocumented. You can't hire someone because they're too brown and not American sounding enough.
That's not to say that I think the solution is universal identification or legalization of racism in hiring practices.
Okay, I can see for that one that you might say that you didn't pay them to enter the country and that you didn't help them find a home and so you aren't technically harboring.
But, what about this one?
18 U.S.C. § 1546
This says, "having reason to know." So, you actually don't have to really know, you just have to have reason to know, to be incarcerated. That really seems like I should check, if only to cover my own ass. Like if the picture wasn't clear but you accepted it anyway, you had reason to know? Seems pretty loose for anyone that wants to enforce it.
I'm clearly not an attorney, so if you are, please correct me.
