A lawyer tells a Fox News reporter about a new personal injury client he’d signed up. The client was employed on a large construction job and had fallen from a scaffold, and was suing his employer.

The client had been working in this country for almost 20 years and had a federal tax transcript going back almost that far showing he'd paid his taxes. Adding machine projections using the 19 years more the client could have expected to work had he not been injured put his future lost wages somewhere in the vicinity of $950,000. But the client never obtained any kind of legal immigration status, and because the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (search) (IRCA) prohibited any U.S. employer from legally employing him, his employment and payment of his wages were illegal.

Yet, as last week’s Wal-Mart raids (search) have shown, the fact that the employment and payment of illegal immigrants is against the law does little to stop U.S. companies from hiring them. And, my friend's client stands an excellent chance of winning his case.

You may wonder how it is that an illegal immigrant is known to our government for almost 20 years and still not removed from the country. It's because the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (search) is to collect revenue. Anyone earning income in the United States must pay taxes on it, even if their employment or presence in the U.S. is illegal. The Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (search) the IRS issues to people who are ineligible for a Social Security number (read: people with no legal immigration status) could be an excellent resource for locating people who are removable, but immigration authorities cannot get this information because IRS regulations prohibit taxpayer information from being disclosed to third parties without the authorization of the taxpayer. The IRS has made a policy decision to shield illegal immigrants from immigration authorities. Even after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, our government places a higher value on collecting revenue than removing illegal immigrants.

People who have no legal immigration status make excellent personal injury clients. This is so mainly because it’s difficult to document their work history and courts almost always permit juries to award future lost wages with the sparsest evidence of what those future lost earnings might be. Copies of the illegal immigrant’s tax returns, with the testimony of an economist, is regularly the basis of future lost wages awards that can run into the millions of dollars. Any attempt by a defense attorney to elicit testimony on the plaintiff’s lack of legal immigration status will be met with an objection that the court will sustain. Even asking an illegal immigrant’s economist how he can be certain that the plaintiff will be allowed to remain in the U.S. for the rest of his projected work life, and not removed, is not permitted by trial judges.

Stories abound of illegal immigrant plaintiffs who have been in the U.S. for a month, land a good paying (albeit illegal) job in the construction industry, and fall from a ladder two days after they begin work. Their medical bills are normally paid through Workers Compensation (search) coverage, as is a percentage of their lost wages. Then every company on the work site who played any role at all in the construction is sued. In the case of my friend's client, his employment in the U.S. was illegal, payment for his work was illegal and at any moment he might be picked up by the BCIS and removed from the country. Nonetheless, courts, generally, would allow an economist to testify that because of his injury, the defendants owed my friend’s new client nearly $1 million for his future lost wages alone.

American consumers foot the bill through increased insurance premiums.

Last spring, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Hoffman Plastics Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB (search). The court relied on the prohibitions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act in deciding that an illegal immigrant is barred from an award of back pay after his unlawful firing. Many read the case to mean that any award of lost wages to an illegal immigrant is prohibited by the IRCA. Since the decision in Hoffman, several federal appellate courts and some state courts have found that the IRCA prohibits any award of lost wages to an illegal immigrant, be they for past or future lost wages.

In New York, several appellate court decisions (made after IRCA, surprisingly) held that at least in New York, IRCA was more or less meaningless and state courts could award lost wages to people whose employment in the U.S. violated immigration laws. But since the Supreme Court’s Hoffman decision, one New York trial judge recently showed the courage to do what the IRCA requires. The judge decided that if a plaintiff cannot demonstrate that he has a legal right to work in the U.S., he cannot ask a jury to award him lost wages because federal law prohibits it. The judge’s decision in the case, Majlinger v. Casino Contracting Corp. (search), has already been appealed.

Reed Podell, a defense lawyer at Smith & LaCuercia in Manhattan, represented one of the defendants in the case and successfully moved the court to strike the plaintiff’s lost wage claim. Some defense lawyers have become accustomed to courts allowing the lost wage claims of people who cannot demonstrate a legal right to work, says Podell, and frequently do not demand proof of a plaintiff’s legal right to work during the discovery process. Failing to do this can put defense lawyers in a bad position when the time comes to move the court to strike an undocumented alien’s wage claim.

But the client’s $950,000 lost wage claim continues to look good. To date, the lawyers representing the defendants in that case still have not demanded any proof of the client’s right to legally work in the U.S. If you own a business, you can expect your insurance premiums to rise a little bit more. If immigration authorities do not have the resources to stop the employment of illegal immigrants, perhaps America’s employers, when sued, will at least use the opportunity to make it less profitable.

___________________________________________

Does this pi$$ anyone else off? I think it's absolute crap that this guy can remain here, and most likely get his claim!

Mike

__________________
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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

As if it wasn't already glaringly obvious!! Money first!

i'm surprised the IRS didn't sue the guy's employer for the lost TAXES on the money he won't earn now !!!

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

IRS issues aside, we need to seriously clamp down on illegal immigration.

Is there currently a penalty for businesses who hire illegals? If there is, why is it not strictly enforced?!? If there isn't, there should be, and any illegal found should be immediately deported.

For the record, I've got no problem with people wanting to come to this country to get a better life...but if they're going to, they need to do it legally. Period.

My thoughts exactly.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Tell you what you do. Remove the demand. Boycott all business that use illegal aliens or outsource business to companies which hire illegal aliens.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

you want a nice boycott ? boycott the businesses that outsource jobs to foreign sources because it's cheaper.
witness what the banks are doing now. if you call customer service you may reach an operator sitting in front of a computer in india.

if the business does not keep x percent of their staff in the usa then they should be forced to change or close. how's that?
grrr.

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

Yes but they're trained to tell you that you've reached Houston!

Not only the banks, but every back office job which doesn't entail face to face contact with a customer or client is on the chopping block.

Business should not be forced to keep any jobs in the US, rather, we should not be so demanding of businesses to show the kind of profits that we've been accustomed to seeing during the boom years. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. People stand up and cheer at productivity when in fact they're just applauding the loss of US jobs. The same wealth creating monster also creates layoffs.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

i agree wholeheartedly with most of what you are say..except that if the corporations cannot give up some of their bottom line and accept a reduced profit for keeping jobs in the country which after all is producing their revenue, then they should be forced to.
otherwise they will continue to outsource jobs. do you blame them? the share holders are happy but that does not help the poor guy or gal that just got 'downsized'.

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

It'll be tough to force them. Current wisdom shows that consumers aren't willing to absorb the company's cost of doing business. Consumers, like corporations, are concerned with their bottom lines. People still shop by price. Service is secondary.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

agree everyone wants the cheapest price. regretfully when nobody has jobs then the 'cheapest' won't be cheap enough....
then deflation will set in which some in the gov't are already afraid of.

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

The solution is not to force anyone to keep jobs in the US. The solution is to encourage innovation and exploration of new markets. Face it, old markets and established industries with nowhere to grow have no choice but to look at alternative methods of cutting costs.

OTOH, the healthcare industry is booming and doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. We're importing nurses like crazy and still can't keep up.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

sorry gotta disagree. market conditions already require them to innovate.
as for the job outsourcing
if they won't do it themselves then pass legislation forcing them.

health care - sure it's booming. so is the cost for health insurance which is outrageous. the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies are so strong nothing will ever be changed in our lifetime on that score. tax breaks help but not enough. doctors are going out of business due to impossible levels of malpractice insurance.

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

pc dave

sure the mills closed but at least it went to carolina not outside the country. people always have migrated to where they can find work, but they should not be obliged to leave their own country to do so.
there can be some balance in this thing.

i am not against imports or exports for that matter.- i'm just saying that a co. that derives it's revenue from the usa should be able to afford at least x minimum percent of it's staff domestically.
it's the same thing as putting import duties on certain commodities to protect domestic industry.

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

Let me get this straight:

Some folks view capitalism as a zero-sum game: If I get rich, somebody else must get poorer, right?

Bt that argument, American capitalism sucks all the capital out of the economies of the planet (except ours) forcing everybody else to live in poverty.

We get so damnably rich that we wont accept low wage jobs so local companies hire poor 3rd world labor at cheaper prices than possible in the USA.

This gives folks living in poverty a chance at a beter life. It raises the standards of living in the 3rd world.

This is a bad thing.

Have I got it right?