Foreword

• Author: Charles M. Miller/Daniel Brown/Marcine Anne Seid
• Profession: Founding partner of the Miller Law Offices, Studio City, California/Partner in Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP's Washington, D.C./Principal attorney of the Seid Law Group, Palo Alto, California
• Pages: 13-15

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Today, employers are facing an unprecedented assault on the workplace. In the past seven

months prior to the publication of this masterful work, Homeland Security Investigations

(HSI) initiated 2,282 I-9 audits and made 594 criminal arrests and 610 administrative

worksite-related arrests. Arrests and convictions are no longer merely limited to violations

of immigration statutes, but as this book well documents, also includes charges of wire

and mail fraud, harboring, identity theft, and other criminal acts. Debarment and forfei-

ture may then follow. If the employer is lucky enough not to be arrested, he or she will face

a substantial ne. It is not surprising, therefore, that in FY 2017 businesses were ordered

to pay $97.6 million in judicial forfeitures, nes, and restitution, and $7.8 million in civil

nes.1

These enhanced efforts to prosecute and ne employers occur within the context of

a new administration that aggressively seeks to severely limit immigration to the United

States and to remove from the country persons who might otherwise be lawfully employed

in our country. The assault on H-1B, L-1, and E-2 foreign nationals is well documented

and is now a daily occurrence in the workplace.

An employer, faced with a complex and hostile environment, particularly when it

employs foreign nationals, must have a strategy and plan to comply with the myriad

regulations, statutes, and administrative ats. As I write this, the administration has made

sweeping and unprecedented policy changes as to when a student may be in an autho-

rized status, as to when a person may receive and maintain the benet of prosecutorial

discretion to remain in the United States, or how a person who lawfully seeks to change

or extend his or her status will be treated. These changes also directly affect the employer,

who, as this book eloquently notes, must thread a needle between antidiscrimination laws

and employer sanctions laws.

In light of these issues, astute counsel must not only shield his or her client from the

dangers of past errors, but must look prospectively to create a compliance program for

his or her client that addresses the sophisticated nuances of meeting today’s workplace

challenges. As this work correctly and exhaustively details, a compliance program must

consider SEC issues involving Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance; past settlement agreements

1. ICE Ofcial Website as of May 14, 2018, AILA Doc. No. 18051401.

Foreword