Trump’s ‘Immployment’ Law Agenda: Intensifying Employment-Based Enforcement and Un-Authorizing the Authorized

Kati L. Griffith & Shannon Gleeson, Trump’s ‘Immployment’ Law Agenda: Intensifying Employment-based Enforcement and Un-authorizing the Authorized, 48 SOUTHWESTERN LAW REVIEW 475 (2019)

27 Pages Posted: 11 Nov 2019 Last revised: 31 Aug 2020

See all articles by Kati L. Griffith

Kati L. Griffith

Cornell University - School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Shannon Gleeson

Cornell University - School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Date Written: October 31, 2019

Abstract

This article considers President Trump’s immigration efforts through an immployment law lens. Immployment is a conceptual frame that reminds us to consider (1) immigration policy’s impacts on employers and the employment-based rights of workers, and (2) employment and labor law’s impacts on immigration policy. It draws from available enforcement data to argue that Trump’s regime is intensifying the use of workplace-based immigration enforcement tools such as audits of employer records and arrests of workers at their place of work. While his predecessors used these tools too, Trump is simultaneously pursuing both high profile worker arrests and bureaucratic audits as key tools of a more aggressive immigration enforcement strategy. The Trump administration is also deviating from his predecessors by un-authorizing large groups of authorized workers. The article focuses its attention primarily on one such targeted group, workers with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), who may soon lose their authorization. It also uses interviews with two dozen immigrant worker advocates in the New York City metropolitan area to convey the ways that the threat of workplace-based immigration enforcement and un-authorization efforts are consequential for workers and the government compliance and benefits regimes that rely on voluntary participation of immigrant workers.

Keywords: labor, employment, immigration

Suggested Citation

Griffith, Kati L. and Gleeson, Shannon, Trump’s ‘Immployment’ Law Agenda: Intensifying Employment-Based Enforcement and Un-Authorizing the Authorized (October 31, 2019). Kati L. Griffith & Shannon Gleeson, Trump’s ‘Immployment’ Law Agenda: Intensifying Employment-based Enforcement and Un-authorizing the Authorized, 48 SOUTHWESTERN LAW REVIEW 475 (2019) , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3478758

Kati L. Griffith (Contact Author)

Cornell University - School of Industrial and Labor Relations ( email )

Ithaca, NY 14853-3901
United States

Shannon Gleeson

Cornell University - School of Industrial and Labor Relations ( email )

Ithaca, NY 14853-3901
United States

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