Illegal Aliens

HRHolm

Our company recently received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that some of the Social Security numbers that we reported on our year end W-4's were not found in their system. We sent a letter to those individuals whose SS#'s appeared on the list stating that they needed to contact the SSA to get this straightened out. Since then, I have learned that all of those SS's are invalid (by a friendly source, not the employees). I know the Immigration laws say that as employers we can not continue to employ illegal aliens, but I have no hard evidence that they are other than their SS's not being registered. What steps can we go through as a company to make sure they become legal or have the appropriate documents? I have contacted what seems like every agency out there and have gotten no definite answers. It seems like we are suppose to take care of these problems but our hands are tied to do anything.
Any suggestions?

Parabeagle

Our company has a policy outlined in our employee handbook that specifies we are committed to employing only those persons eligible to work in the United States. When we receive a letter such as you have received, we send a letter to the EE asking them to contact SSA and rectify the matter. If we receive a notice from SSA the following quarter, we again contact the employee via letter and inform them that if they do not rectify the situation within 90 days they will face disciplinary action up to and including termination for insubordination. Third time's the charm: If they show up on the third notice from SSA, we terminate them for insubordination. We always terminate the individual's employment in these instances and, in some cases, they "disappear" after we send them the first letter (no call/no show).

SMace

What steps can
>we go through as a company to make sure they
>become legal or have the appropriate documents?

Tell the employees they have one week to provide you with a valid SS# and give them the contact info for your local SS office. If they can't produce one and don't have a valid reason why, terminate. They usually never show back up.

Don D

SMace is correct. To hell with writing letters back and forth giving illegals several opportunities to meet certain requirements. The law is the law. Nor do you need an additional policy statement indicating that your company will follow the law. That is assumed if you are in business. The letter you got from the SSA is ample evidence that you are employing illegals. Period. Call them to your desk (no letter required) and tell them they are immediately suspended and have one week to produce written evidence from the SSA that they are legal. You will never hear from them again after you do this.

System

Question: the letter we receive each year clearly states that no action is to be taken against anyone whose number appears on the list. While I agree with the responses above, the feds are making it difficult. Take no action, but don't continue to employ them. Huh? The best thing to do is to confirm the SS# for each person you hire. INS or whatever they're called these days will not confirm the validity of a green card. They say to accept it if it appears valid.

SMace

My interpretation is that you should not take action just because they are on the list. It may be an administrative error on the SSA's part. But if they cannot produce a valid number they don't work.

Don D

We have facilities in 44 countries, 200 in this country. Our corporate attorneys advise that should we receive notification that there is a SS mismatch, the ee, no matter who it is, is to be immediately called in, suspended, and told he/she has one week to return with written notification from the SSA that their number is valid. If the mismatch is my personal number, I am suspended. If it's a clerical error, fine, it gets corrected. 99.5% of them, however, you will never hear from again. The advice from our attorneys also included the admonition that there could be a fine as high as $10,000 per illegal plus $1,000 per day for each day each illegal is in 'employed' status.

The comment on the letter you receive indicating 'no action should be taken against' the person on the list is simply guidance suggesting you should not summarily fire them. You are however obligated legally to take action.

If you are employing an illegal, that parenthetical remark at the bottom of a SSA letter will not save your bacon.

HRHolm

Thanks for your response. It always helps to get other persons opinions on hairy matters, especially when the law is so murky.

cebudragonlady

Question: I note that on some of the SS cards, the employee's name is so long as not to allow printing of all the letters. For example,a Green Card may show FFFFF MMMMM LLLLLLLL, while the SS card will have printed FFFFF MMMMM LL . Now if the W-2 has the full name as reflected on the Green Card , will there be a mismatch with Social Security ?

Chari

blw

I don't know that, but that is why we pay everyone according to the name on their SS card. If they are married and never changed it, too bad, we set them up under their maiden name. We don't have mismatches due to that reason at least.

DB

I don't know the answer to your question but I do know that I have never seen a card with part of the name missing. I have a card in front of me that uses 28 characters for the full name. It's split between two lines so it all fits with room to spare. Another has 24 characters on one line. These are valid cards that have stood the test of time. Can part of the name be missing and it be a legitimate card?

HRSPD

From a person who in her short 9 years in HR has gone through 3 INS audits with the same company during a 3 year employment period, I 100% agree with Don. Once these letters are received which is usually after w-2's are filed, the employer should contact the employee,communicate with them regarding the concern and give them a limited timeframe to correct or prove the information. If all information is correct the employee should be able to get matters taken care of with social security in 1 day! If the employee does not provide updated information within your timeframe you are legally responsible for no longer offering employment to these individuals. When you terminate for these reasons, if the paperwork was not legit at the time of termination the employee will understand. Sometimes these things are difficult because 90% of the time you are loosing valuable, hard working employees-if this is the case encourage the employee to re-apply once the information has been corrected.

If you have many of these forms it is a time consuming process but it is all for the best interest of your company. Good luck!

Pork

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-30-04 AT 11:07AM (CST)[/font][br][br]HRHOLM: There are several threads on this subject and lots of discussion on this particular arena; do a search and read it all, there is lots to learn here!

Bottom line: write-up the employee for a "suspension from work" until he meets with SSA to fix a mis-match situation on which you the company has been notified. Give the employee 5 days to get to the SSA and return to your location for administrative correction and action necessary to correct the SSA CONCERNS. When the person returns he/she will have a document from the SSA identifying the concerns and the corrective action required. You then take the document and execute the corrective action required. If the company is at fault because we inputted an incorrect information into the system, we pay the employee for the lost time. If it was SSA's fault we send them on back to work and provide an excused absence document and authorize the employee to use an PTO day for the time spent. After 5 days the suspension is changed to a termination for failure to folow instructions/absentism/falsification of company documents.

EXPERIENCE: Two employees were identified as a gender error.
three have had mis-spelled names.
one had a birthdate error.
6 have had numerical number switches.
10 hispanic employees have never returned to even pick-up their last pay-check. We can't forward the check to anywhere, we don't know where the "nomads" are.
Got a call from H & R Block last week two of these were attempting to get their income tax w-2s and they wanted me to FAX them to H & R Block, they put the attendant on the telephone, she gave me their names and social security numbers. She FAXED me a signature docuement requesting the W-2 information. I faxed a copy and ask her to give me a mailing address and I would forward the original W-2 when it returned. They would not allow her to do that, so I told her that she should have their names and SSN verified. She thanked me and stated she would do that right away. I never got the authorization on the other one, I assumed they disappeared from the H&R Block office, too, never to be heard from again. The "NOMADS" are alive and well in our country!!!!

PORK

HRHolm

Pork - Thanks I will do more searching.

safety

Isn’t it amazing we can track one mad cow but can’t track these nomads.

Pork

we could begin to track these "NOMADS" if our government would give us a method of registration, which would make a believer out of the "NOMADS" that we are not going to pick up all 6.4 million and carry them back to the border. We have 8 of 15 remaining on our payrolls, we processed applications for them in the year of 2001. One of the 8 has risen to Assistant Manager status and earning $26,600 a year. Not bad for a "NOMAD" the others are $7.00 to $9.00 per hour and many hours of overtime. The "NOMAD" can not afford to leave our employment. Those parties talking of financial abuse and long hours without pay, do not know what is really happening.

They fines are heavy; we no longer hire anyone until the SSN, NAME, BIRTHDATE, AND GENDER are verified. The foreign national knows we check and now they never come to our door.

PORK