Pinkertons at DHS: are immigration busts undermining U.S. labor law?

• Author: Frank, T.A.
• Position: United States Department of Homeland Security

In November 2005, hotel employees in the city of Emeryville, California got some good news. Local voters had passed a "living wage" law requiring hotels to pay workers a minimum of nine dollars per hour plus extra for certain duties. In an expensive town--Emeryville occupies a narrow peninsula in the San Francisco Bay, making it attractive to tourists--this was welcome news. As the months went by, however, employees at one hotel, the Woodfin Suites, found that they were still being paid less than the law required. In September 2006 they went before the city council to complain about it.

Then things got ugly. A few weeks after the city council meeting, managers at the Woodfin told employees that their Social Security numbers had generated "no-match" results--meaning that the numbers were probably fraudulent. The employees would have a month to fix the trouble or be dismissed. Since some of the employees had already been there for six years on flimsy paperwork, the sudden request seemed like revenge on the part of the hotel. Soon, the two sides went to court in a complicated case involving the interplay of back wages and immigration law.

As the fight worked its way through the legal system, however, something else was going on behind the scenes. Woodfin's CEO, Samuel Hardage, decided to contact his congressman, Republican Brian Bilbray of San Diego, a noted immigration hawk, to ask for some help. Would Bilbray kindly intervene with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE?

Bilbray, who had received campaign backing from Hardage, obliged. On February 21, 2007, the congressman sent a letter to the head of ICE, Julie Myers, asking her to investigate the legal status of employees of Woodfin and other businesses in Emeryville. Later that year, ICE followed up, questioning one of the fired Woodfin workers at home and arresting an employee at a neighboring Emeryville hotel. As ICE busts go, this one was mild. Still, if Hardage's intention had been to send a warning to illegal immigrants everywhere about what happens to complainers, it had been effective.

The Woodfin case generated a minor stir in the Bay area, but the episode was typical of a common problem: when immigration enforcement and worker protection come into conflict with each other, they make a mess. That's because one usually comes at the expense of the other.

Consider these examples: In Tar Heel, North Carolina, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union was trying to...