Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2003
Abstract
Immigrant workers in the United States of America are among the most poorly paid and poorly treated in the workforce. Amici’s attempts to protect the rights of immigrants, including unauthorized workers, have been severely hampered by domestic U.S. laws that discriminate on the basis of alienage and immigration status, and especially by a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, 535 U.S. 137 (2002).
Immigrant workers in particular employment-related visa categories are explicitly excluded from the protections of certain U.S. labor and employment laws. So, too, immigrant workers who lack employment authorization required by federal law (“unauthorized immigrants”) are denied the protection of some state and federal laws. As a result of the Hoffman decision, many employers have defended pending cases by claiming that unauthorized immigrant workers have no labor and employment rights in the United States. Undoubtedly, some lower courts will find that unauthorized immigrants are excluded from the protections of additional labor laws.
Disciplines
Human Rights Law | Immigration Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Sarah H. Cleveland, Beth Lyon & Rebecca Smith,
Inter-American Court of Human Rights Amicus Curiae Brief: The United States Violates International Law When Labor Law Remedies Are Restricted Based on Workers' Migrant Status,
1
Seattle J. Soc. Just.
795
(2003).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3444